Men, Women, and Ghosts

by

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

1869. 

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO. , in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of theDistrict of Massachusetts. 

University Press: Welch, Bigelow, &. , Cambridge. 

Note. 

Of this collection of stories, "Calico, " "The Day of my Death, " and"Night-Watches" (the last under the title of "Voices of the Night") haveappeared in _Harper's Monthly_; "One of the Elect, " (under the title of"Magdalene, ") in _Hours at Home_; and "Little Tommy Tucker, " in the_Watchman and Reflector_. 

E. S. P. 

Andover, April, 1869. 

Contents. 

No NewsThe Tenth of JanuaryNight-WatchesThe Day of My Death"Little Tommy Tucker"One of the ElectWhat Was the Matter?In the Gray GothCalicoKentucky's Ghost

No News. 

None at all. Understand that, please, to begin with. That you will atonce, and distinctly, recall Dr. Sharpe--and his wife, I make no doubt. Indeed, it is because the history is a familiar one, some of theunfamiliar incidents of which have come into my possession, that Iundertake to tell it. 

My relation to the Doctor, his wife, and their friend, has been in manyrespects peculiar. Without entering into explanations which I am not atliberty to make, let me say, that those portions of their story whichconcern our present purpose, whether or not they fell under my personalobservation, are accurately, and to the best of my judgment impartially, related. 

Nobody, I think, who was at the wedding, dreamed that there would everbe such a story to tell. It was such a pretty, peaceful wedding! If youwere there, you remember it as you remember a rare sunrise, or apeculiarly delicate May-flower, or that strain in a simple old songwhich is like orioles and butterflies and dew-drops. 

There were not many of us; we were all acquainted with one another; theday was bright, and Harrie did not faint nor cry. There were a coupleof bridesmaids, --Pauline Dallas, and a Miss--Jones, I think, --besidesHarrie's little sisters; and the people were well dressed and welllooking, but everybody was thoroughly at home, comfortable, and on alevel. There was no annihilating of little country friends in grayalpacas by city cousins in point and pearls, no crowding and no crush, and, I believe, not a single "front breadth" spoiled by the ices. 

Harrie is not called exactly pretty, but she must be a very plain womanwho is not pleasant to see upon her wedding day. Harrie's eyes shone, --Inever saw such eyes! and she threw her head back like a queen whom theywere crowning. 

Her father married them. Old Mr. Bird was an odd man, with odd notionsof many things, of which marriage was one. The service was his own. Iafterwards asked him for a copy of it, which I have preserved. TheCovenant ran thus:--

"Appealing to your Father who is in heaven to witness your sincerity, you . .. . Do now take this woman whose hand you hold--choosing her alonefrom all the world--to be your lawfully wedded wife. You trust her asyour best earthly friend. You promise to love, to cherish, and toprotect her; to be considerate of her happiness in your plans of life;to cultivate for her sake all manly virtues; and in all things to seekher welfare as you seek your own. You pledge yourself thus honorably toher, to be her husband in good faith, so long as the providence of Godshall spare you to each other. 

"In like manner, looking to your Heavenly Father for his blessing, you. .. Do now receive this man, whose hand you hold, to be your lawfullywedded husband. You choose him from all the world as he has chosen you. You pledge your trust to him as your best earthly friend. You promise tolove, to comfort, and to honor him; to cultivate for his sake allwomanly graces; to guard his reputation, and assist him in his life'swork; and in all things to esteem his happiness as your own. You giveyourself thus trustfully to him, to be his wife in good faith, so longas the providence of God shall spare you to each other. "

When Harrie lifted her shining eyes to say, "I _do_!" the two littlehappy words ran through the silent room like a silver bell; they wouldhave tinkled in your ears for weeks to come if you had heard them. 

I have been thus particular in noting the words of the service, partlybecause they pleased me, partly because I have since had some occasionto recall them, and partly because I remember having wondered, at thetime, how many married men and women of your and my acquaintance, ifhonestly subjecting their union to the test and full interpretation andremotest bearing of such vows as these, could live in the sight of Godand man as "lawfully wedded" husband and wife. 

Weddings are always very sad things to me; as much sadder than burialsas the beginning of life should be sadder than the end of it. Thereadiness with which young girls will flit out of a tried, proved, happyhome into the sole care and keeping of a man whom they have known threemonths, six, twelve, I do not profess to understand. Such knowledge istoo wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. But that maybe because I am fifty-five, an old maid, and have spent twenty years inboarding-houses. 

A woman reads the graces of a man at sight. His faults she cannotthoroughly detect till she has been for years his wife. And his faultsare so much more serious a matter to her than hers to him!

I was thinking of this the day before the wedding. I had stepped in fromthe kitchen to ask Mrs. Bird about the salad, when I came abruptly, atthe door of the sitting-room, upon as choice a picture as one is likelyto see. 

The doors were open through the house, and the wind swept in and out. Ascarlet woodbine swung lazily back and forth beyond the window. Dimplesof light burned through it, dotting the carpet and the black-and-whitemarbled oilcloth of the hall. Beyond, in the little front parlor, framedin by the series of doorways, was Harrie, all in a cloud of white. Itfloated about her with an idle, wavelike motion. She had a veil likefretted pearls through which her tinted arm shone faintly, and theshadow of a single scarlet leaf trembled through a curtain upon herforehead. 

Her mother, crying a little, as mothers will cry the day before thewedding, was smoothing with tender touch a tiny crease upon the cloud; abridesmaid or two sat chattering on the floor; gloves, and favors, andflowers, and bits of lace like hoar frost, lay scattered about; and thewhole was repictured and reflected and reshaded in the greatold-fashioned mirrors before which Harrie turned herself about. 

It seemed a pity that Myron Sharpe should miss that, so I called him infrom the porch where he sat reading Stuart Mill on Liberty. 

If you form your own opinion of a man who might spend a livelongmorning, --an October morning, quivering with color, alive with light, sweet with the breath of dropping pines, soft with the caress of a windthat had filtered through miles of sunshine, --and that the morning ofthe day before his wedding, --reading Stuart Mill on Liberty, --I cannothelp it. 

Harrie, turning suddenly, saw us, --met her lover's eyes, stood a momentwith lifted lashes and bright cheeks, --crept with a quick, impulsivemovement into her mother's arms, kissed her, and floated away up thestairs. 

"It's a perfect fit, " said Mrs. Bird; coming out with one corner of avery dingy handkerchief--somebody had just used it to dust the Parianvases--at her eyes. 

And though, to be sure, it was none of my business, I caught myselfsaying, under my breath, --

"It's a fit for life; for a _life_, Dr. Sharpe. "

Dr. Sharpe smiled serenely. He was very much in love with the littlepink-and-white cloud that had just fluttered up the stairs. If it hadbeen drifting to him for the venture of twenty lifetimes, he would havefelt no doubt of the "fit. "

Nor, I am sure, would Harrie. She stole out to him that evening afterthe bridal finery was put away, and knelt at his feet in her plainlittle muslin dress, her hair all out of crimp, slipping from her netbehind her ears, --Harrie's ears were very small, and shaded off in thecolors of a pale apple-blossom, --up-turning her flushed and weary face. 

"Put away the book, please, Myron. "

Myron put away the book (somebody on Bilious Affections), and looked fora moment without speaking at the up-turned face. 

Dr. Sharpe had spasms of distrusting himself amazingly; perhaps most menhave, --and ought to. His face grew grave just then. That little girl'sclear eyes shone upon him like the lights upon an altar. In veryunworthiness of soul he would have put the shoes from off his feet. Theground on which he trod was holy. 

When he spoke to the child, it was in a whisper:--

"Harrie, are you afraid of me? I know I am not very good. "

And Harrie, kneeling with the shadows of the scarlet leaves upon herhair, said softly, "How could I be afraid of you? It is _I_ who am notgood. "

Dr. Sharpe could not have made much progress in Bilious Affections thatevening. All the time that the skies were fading, we saw them wanderingin and out among the apple-trees, --she with those shining eyes, and herhand in his. And when to-morrow had come and gone, and in the dyinglight they drove away, and Miss Dallas threw old Grandmother Bird'slittle satin boot after the carriage, the last we saw of her was thather hand was clasped in his, and that her eyes were shining. 

Well, I believe that they got along very well till the first baby came. As far as my observation goes, young people usually get along very welltill the first baby comes. These particular young people had a clearconscience, --as young people's consciences go, --fair health, acomfortable income for two, and a very pleasant home. 

This home was on the coast. The townspeople made shoes, and minded theirown business. Dr. Sharpe bought the dying practice of an antediluvianwho believed in camomile and castor-oil. Harrie mended a few stockings, made a few pies, and watched the sea. 

It was almost enough of itself to make one happy--the sea--as ittumbled about the shores of Lime. Harrie had a little seat hollowed outin the cliffs, and a little scarlet bathing-dress, which wassurprisingly becoming, and a little boat of her own, moored in a littlebay, --a pretty shell which her husband had had made to order, that shemight be able to row herself on a calm water. He was very thoughtful forher in those days. 

She used to take her sewing out upon the cliff; she would be demure andbusy; she would finish the selvage seam; but the sun blazed, the seashone, the birds sang, all the world was at play, --what could it matterabout selvage seams? So the little gold thimble would drop off, thespool trundle down the cliff, and Harrie, sinking back into a cushion ofgreen and crimson sea-weed, would open her wide eyes and dream. Thewaves purpled and silvered, and broke into a mist like powdered amber, the blue distances melted softly, the white sand glittered, the gullswere chattering shrilly. What a world it was!

"And he is in it!" thought Harrie. Then she would smile and shut hereyes. "And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that Moses'face shone, and they were afraid to come nigh him. " Harrie wondered ifeverybody's joy were too great to look upon, and wondered, in achildish, frightened way, how it might be with sorrow; if people stoodwith veiled faces before it, dumb with pain as she with peace, --and thenit was dinner-time, and Myron came down to walk up the beach with her, and she forgot all about it. 

She forgot all about everything but the bare joy of life and the sea, when she had donned the pretty scarlet suit, and crept out into thesurf, --at the proper medicinal hour, for the Doctor was very particularwith her, --when the warm brown waves broke over her face, the longsea-weeds slipped through her fingers, the foam sprinkled her hair withcrystals, and the strong wind was up. 

She was a swift swimmer, and as one watched from the shore, her lithescarlet shoulders seemed to glide like a trail of fire through thelighted water; and when she sat in shallow foam with sunshine on her, orflashed through the dark green pools among the rocks, or floated withthe incoming tide, her great bathing-hat dropping shadows on her wetlittle happy face, and her laugh ringing out, it was a pretty sight. 

But a prettier one than that, her husband thought, was to see her in herboat at sunset; when sea and sky were aflame, when every flake of foamwas a rainbow, and the great chalk-cliffs were blood-red; when the windblew her net off, and in pretty petulance she pulled her hair down, andit rippled all about her as she dipped into the blazing West. 

Dr. Sharpe used to drive home by the beach, on a fair night, always, that he might see it. Then Harrie would row swiftly in, and spring intothe low, broad buggy beside him, and they rode home together in thefragrant dusk. Sometimes she used to chatter on these twilight drives;but more often she crept up to him and shut her eyes, and was as stillas a sleepy bird. It was so pleasant to do nothing but be happy!

I believe that at this time Dr. Sharpe loved his wife as unselfishly ashe knew how. Harrie often wrote me that he was "very good. " She wassometimes a little troubled that he should "know so much more" than she, and had fits of reading the newspapers and reviewing her French, andstudying cases of hydrophobia, or some other pleasant subject which hada professional air. Her husband laughed at her for her pains, butnevertheless he found her so much the more entertaining. Sometimes shedrove about with him on his calls, or amused herself by making jelliesin fancy moulds for his poor, or sat in his lap and discoursed like abobolink of croup and measles, pulling his whiskers the while with herpink fingers. 

All this, as I have said, was before the first baby came. 

It is surprising what vague ideas young people in general, and young menin particular, have of the rubs and jars of domestic life; especiallydomestic life on an income of eighteen hundred, American constitutionsand country servants thrown in. 

Dr. Sharpe knew something of illness and babies and worry and watching;but that his own individual baby should deliberately lie and scream tilltwo o'clock in the morning, was a source of perpetual astonishment tohim; and that it, --he and Mrs. Sharpe had their first quarrel over hispersistence in calling the child an "it, "--that it should _invariably_feel called upon to have the colic just as he had fallen into a nap, after a night spent with a dying patient, was a phenomenon of the infantmind for which he was, to say the least, unprepared. 

It was for a long time a mystery to his masculine understanding, thatBiddy could not be nursery-maid as well as cook. "Why, what has she todo now? Nothing but to broil steaks and make tea for two people!" Thatwhenever he had Harrie quietly to himself for a peculiarly pleasanttea-table, the house should resound with sudden shrieks from thenursery, and there was _always_ a pin in that baby, was forever a freshsurprise; and why, when they had a house full of company, no "girl, " andHarrie down with a sick-headache, his son and heir should of _necessity_be threatened with scarlatina, was a philosophical problem over which hespeculated long and profoundly. 

So, gradually, in the old way, the old sweet habits of the longhoneymoon were broken. Harrie dreamed no more on the cliffs by thebright noon sea; had no time to spend making scarlet pictures in thelittle bathing-suit; had seldom strength to row into the sunset, herhair loose, the bay on fire, and one to watch her from the shore. Therewere no more walks up the beach to dinner; there came an end to thedrives in the happy twilight; she could not climb now upon her husband'sknee, because of the heavy baby on her own. 

The spasms of newspaper reading subsided rapidly; Corinne and Racinegathered the dust in peace upon their shelves; Mrs. Sharpe made no morefancy jellies, and found no time to inquire after other people's babies. 

One becomes used to anything after a while, especially if one happens tobe a man. It would have surprised Dr. Sharpe, if he had taken the painsto notice, --which I believe he never did, --how easily he became used tohis solitary drives and disturbed teas; to missing Harrie's watchingface at door or window; to sitting whole evenings by himself while shesang to the fretful baby overhead with her sweet little tired voice; toslipping off into the "spare room" to sleep when the child cried atnight, and Harrie, up and down with him by the hour, flitted from cradleto bed, or paced the room, or sat and sang, or lay and cried herself, insheer despair of rest; to wandering away on lonely walks; to steppingoften into a neighbor's to discuss the election or the typhoid in thevillage; to forgetting that his wife's conversational capacities couldextend beyond Biddy and teething; to forgetting that she might everhunger for a twilight drive, a sunny sail, for the sparkle andfreshness, the dreaming, the petting, the caresses, all the silly littlelovers' habits of their early married days; to going his own ways, andletting her go hers. 

Yet he loved her, and loved her only, and loved her well. That he neverdoubted, nor, to my surprise, did she. I remember once, when on a visitthere, being fairly frightened out of the proprieties by hearing hercall him "Dr. Sharpe. " I called her away from the children soon after, on pretence of helping me unpack. I locked the door, pulled her downupon a trunk tray beside me, folded both her hands in mine, and studiedher face; it had grown to be a very thin little face, less pretty thanit was in the shadow of the woodbine, with absent eyes and a sad mouth. She knew that I loved her, and my heart was full for the child; and so, for I could not help it, I said, --"Harrie, is all well between you? Ishe quite the same?"

She looked at me with a perplexed and musing air. 

"The same? O yes, he is quite the same to me. He would always be thesame to me. Only there are the children, and we are so busy. He--why, heloves me, you know, --" she turned her head from side to side wearily, with the puzzled expression growing on her forehead, --"he loves me justthe same, --just the same. I am _his wife_; don't you see?"

She drew herself up a little haughtily, said that she heard the babycrying, and slipped away. 

But the perplexed knot upon her forehead did not slip away. I was ratherglad that it did not. I liked it better than the absent eyes. Thatafternoon she left her baby with Biddy for a couple of hours, went awayby herself into the garden, sat down upon a stone and thought. 

Harrie took a great deal of comfort in her babies, quite as much as Iwished to have her. Women whose dream of marriage has faded a littlehave a way of transferring their passionate devotion and content fromhusband to child. It is like anchoring in a harbor, --a pleasant harbor, and one in which it is good to be, --but never on shore and never athome. Whatever a woman's children may be to her, her husband should bealways something beyond and more; forever crowned for her as first, dearest, best, on a throne that neither son nor daughter can usurp. Through mistake and misery the throne may be left vacant or voiceless:but what man cometh after the King?

So, when Harrie forgot the baby for a whole afternoon, and sat out onher stone there in the garden thinking, I felt rather glad than sorry. 

It was when little Harrie was a baby, I believe, that Mrs. Sharpe tookthat notion about having company. She was growing out of the world, shesaid; turning into a fungus; petrifying; had forgotten whether youcalled your seats at the Music Hall pews or settees, and was as afraidof a well-dressed woman as she was of the croup. 

So the Doctor's house at Lime was for two or three months overrun withvisitors and vivacity. Fathers and mothers made fatherly and motherlystays, with the hottest of air-tights put up for their benefit in thefront room; sisters and sisters-in-law brought the fashions and got uptableaux; cousins came on the jump; Miss Jones, Pauline Dallas, and Iwere invited in turn, and the children had the mumps at cheerfulintervals between. 

The Doctor was not much in the mood for entertaining Miss Dallas; he wasa little tired of company, and had had a hard week's work with anepidemic down town. Harrie had not seen her since her wedding day, andwas pleased and excited at the prospect of the visit. Pauline had beenone of her eternal friendships at school. 

Miss Dallas came a day earlier than she was expected, and, as chancewould have it, Harrie was devoting the afternoon to cutting out shirts. Any one who has sat from two till six at that engaging occupation, willunderstand precisely how her back ached and her temples throbbed, andher fingers stung, and her neck stiffened; why her eyes swam, her cheeksburned, her brain was deadened, the children's voices were insufferable, the slamming of a door an agony, the past a blot, the futureunendurable, life a burden, friendship a myth, her hair down, and hercollar unpinned. 

Miss Dallas had never cut a shirt, nor, I believe, had Dr. Sharpe. 

Harrie was groaning over the last wristband but one, when she heard herhusband's voice in the hall. 

"Harrie, Harrie, your friend is here. I found her, by a charmingaccident, at the station, and drove her home. " And Miss Dallas, gloved, perfumed, rustling, in a very becoming veil and travelling-suit of thelatest mode, swept in upon her. 

Harrie was too much of a lady to waste any words on apology, so she ranjust as she was, in her calico dress, with the collar hanging, intoPauline's stately arms, and held up her little burning cheeks to bekissed. 

But her husband looked annoyed. 

He came down before tea in his best coat to entertain their guest. Biddywas "taking an afternoon" that day, and Harrie bustled about with heraching back to make tea and wash the children. She had no time to spendupon herself, and, rather than keep a hungry traveller waiting, smoothedher hair, knotted a ribbon at the collar, and came down in her calicodress. 

Dr. Sharpe glanced at it in some surprise. He repeated the glancesseveral times in the course of the evening, as he sat chatting with hiswife's friend. Miss Dallas was very sprightly in conversation; had readsome, had thought some; and had the appearance of having read andthought about twice as much as she had. 

Myron Sharpe had always considered his wife a handsome woman. Thatnobody else thought her so had made no difference to him. He had oftenlooked into the saucy eyes of little Harrie Bird, and told her that shewas very pretty. As a matter of theory, he supposed her to be verypretty, now that she was the mother of his three children, and breakingher back to cut out his shirts. 

Miss Dallas was a generously framed, well-proportioned woman, whocarried long trains, and tied her hair with crimson velvet. She hadlarge, serene eyes, white hands, and a very pleasant smile. A delicateperfume stirred as she stirred, and she wore a creamy lace about herthroat and wrists. 

Calicoes were never becoming to Harrie, and that one with the palm-leafdid not fit her well, --she cut it herself, to save expense. As theevening passed, in reaction from the weariness of shirt-cutting she grewpale, and the sallow tints upon her face came out; her featuressharpened, as they had a way of doing when she was tired; and she hadlittle else to do that evening than think how tired she was, for herhusband observing, as he remarked afterwards, that she did not feel liketalking, kindly entertained her friend himself. 

As they went up stairs for the night, it struck him, for the first timein his life, that Harrie had a snubbed nose. It annoyed him, because shewas his wife, and he loved her, and liked to feel that she was as welllooking as other women. 

"Your friend is a bright girl, " he said, encouragingly, when Harrie hadhushed a couple of children, and sat wearily down to unbutton her boots. 

"I think you will find her more easy to entertain than CousinMehitabel. "

Then, seeing that Harrie answered absently, and how exhausted shelooked, he expressed his sorrow that she should have worked so long overthe shirts, and kissed her as he spoke; while Harrie cried a little, andfelt as if she would cut them all over again for that. 

The next day Miss Dallas and Mrs. Sharpe sat sewing together; Harriecramping her shoulders and blackening her hands over a patch on Rocko'srough little trousers; Pauline playing idly with purple and orangewools, --her fingers were white, and she sank with grace into the warmcolors of the arm-chair; the door was opened into the hall, and Dr. Sharpe passed by, glancing in as he passed. 

"Your husband is a very intelligent man, Harrie, " observed Miss Dallas, studying her lavenders and lemons thoughtfully. "I was much interestedin what he said about pre-Adamic man, last evening. "

"Yes, " said Harrie, "he knows a great deal. I always thought so. " Thelittle trousers slipped from her black fingers by and by, and her eyeswandered out of the window absently. 

_She_ did not know anything about pre-Adamic man. 

In the afternoon they walked down the beach together, --the Doctor, hiswife, and their guest, --accompanied by as few children as circumstanceswould admit of. Pauline was stately in a beach-dress of bright browns, which shaded softly into one another; it was one of Miss Dallas'speculiarities, that she never wore more than one color, or two, at thesame time. Harrie, as it chanced, wore over her purple dress (Rocko hadtipped over two ink-bottles and a vinegar-cruet on the sack which shouldhave matched it) a dull gray shawl; her bonnet was blue, --it had been apresent from Myron's sister, and she had no other way than to wear it. Miss Dallas bounded with pretty feet from rock to rock. Rocko hungheavily to his mother's fingers; she had no gloves, the child would havespoiled them; her dress dragged in the sand, --she could not afford twoskirts, and one must be long, --and between Rocko and the wind she heldit up awkwardly. 

Dr. Sharpe seldom noticed a woman's dress; he could not have told nowwhether his wife's shawl was sky-blue or pea-green; he knew nothingabout the ink-spots; he had never heard of the unfortunate blue bonnet, or the mysteries of short and long skirts. He might have gone to walkwith her a dozen times and thought her very pretty and "proper" in herappearance. Now, without the vaguest idea what was the trouble, heunderstood that something was wrong. A woman would have said, Mrs. Sharpe looks dowdy and old-fashioned; he only considered that MissDallas had a pleasant air, like a soft brown picture with crimson lightslet in, and that it was an air which his wife lacked. So, when Rockodragged heavily and more heavily at his mother's skirts, and the Doctorand Pauline wandered off to climb the cliffs, Harrie did not seek tofollow or to call them back. She sat down with Rocko on the beach, wrapped herself with a savage hug in the ugly shawl, and wondered with abitterness with which only women can wonder over such trifles, why Godshould send Pauline all the pretty beach-dresses and deny them toher, --for Harrie, like many another "dowdy" woman whom you see upon thestreet, my dear madam, was a woman of fine, keen tastes, and would haveappreciated the soft browns no less than yourself. It seemed to her thevery sting of poverty, just then, that one must wear purple dresses andblue bonnets. 

At the tea-table the Doctor fell to reconstructing the country, and MissDallas, who was quite a politician in Miss Dallas's way, observed thatthe horizon looked brighter since Tennessee's admittance, and that shehoped that the clouds, &c. , --and what _did_ he think of Brownlow? &c. , &c. 

"Tennessee!" exclaimed Harrie; "why, how long has Tennessee been in? Ididn't know anything about it. "

Miss Dallas smiled kindly. Dr. Sharpe bit his lip, and his face flushed. 

"Harrie, you really _ought_ to read the papers, " he said, with someimpatience; "it's no wonder you don't know anything. "

"How should I know anything, tied to the children all day?" Harrie spokequickly, for the hot tears sprang. "Why didn't you tell me somethingabout Tennessee? You never talk politics with _me_. "

This began to be awkward; Miss Dallas, who never interfered--onprinciple--between husband and wife, gracefully took up the baby, andgracefully swung her dainty Geneva watch for the child's amusement, smiling brilliantly. She could not endure babies, but you would neverhave suspected it. 

In fact, when Pauline had been in the house four or five days, Harrie, who never thought very much of herself, became so painfully alive to herown deficiencies, that she fell into a permanent fit of low spirits, which did not add either to her appearance or her vivacity. 

"Pauline is so pretty and bright!" she wrote to me. "I always knew I wasa little fool. You can be a fool before you're married, just as well asnot. Then, when you have three babies to look after, it is too late tomake yourself over. I try very hard now to read the newspapers, onlyMyron does not know it. "

One morning something occurred to Mrs. Sharpe. It was simply that herhusband had spent every evening at home for a week. She was in thenursery when the thought struck her, rocking slowly in her lowsewing-chair, holding the baby on one arm and trying to darn stockingswith the other. 

Pauline was--she did not really know where. Was not that her voice uponthe porch? The rocking-chair stopped sharply, and Harrie looked downthrough the blinds. The Doctor's horse was tied at the gate. The Doctorsat fanning himself with his hat in one of the garden chairs; MissDallas occupied the other; she was chatting, and twisting her goldenwools about her fingers, --it was noticeable that she used only goldenwools that morning; her dress was pale blue, and the effect of thepurples would not have been good. 

"I thought your calls were going to take till dinner, Myron, " calledHarrie, through the blinds. 

"I thought so too, " said Myron, placidly, "but they do not seem to. Won't you come down?"

Harrie thanked him, saying, in a pleasant _nonchalant_ way, that shecould not leave the baby. It was almost the first bit of acting that thechild had ever been guilty of, --for the baby was just going to sleep, and she knew it. 

She turned away from the window quietly. She could not have been angry, and scolded; or noisy, and cried. She put little Harrie into her cradle, crept upon the bed, and lay perfectly still for a long time. 

When the dinner-bell rang, and she got up to brush her hair, thatabsent, apathetic look of which I have spoken had left her eyes. Astealthy brightness came and went in them, which her husband might haveobserved if he and Miss Dallas had not been deep in the Woman question. Pauline saw it; Pauline saw everything. 

"Why did you not come down and sit with us this morning?" she asked, reproachfully, when she and Harrie were alone after dinner. "I don'twant your husband to feel that he must run away from you to entertainme. "

"My husband's ideas of hospitality are generous, " said Mrs. Sharpe. "Ihave always found him as ready to make it pleasant here for my companyas for his own. "

She made this little speech with dignity. Did both women know it for thefarce it was? To do Miss Dallas justice, --I am not sure. She was not abad-hearted woman. She was a handsome woman. She had come to Lime toenjoy herself. Those September days and nights were fair there by thedreamy sea. On the whole I am inclined to think that she did not knowexactly what she was about. 

"_My_ perfumery never lasts, " said Harrie, once, stooping to pick upPauline's fine handkerchief, to which a faint scent like unseenheliotrope clung; it clung to everything of Pauline's; you would neversee a heliotrope without thinking of her, as Dr. Sharpe had often said. "Myron used to like good cologne, but I can't afford to buy it, so Imake it myself, and use it Sundays, and it's all blown away by the timeI get to church. Myron says he is glad of it, for it is more like Mrs. Allen's Hair Restorer than anything else. What do you use, Pauline?"

"Sachet powder of course, " said Miss Dallas, smiling. 

That evening Harrie stole away by herself to the village apothecary's. Myron should not know for what she went. If it were the breath of aheliotrope, thought foolish Harrie, which made it so pleasant for peopleto be near Pauline, that was a matter easily remedied. But sachetpowder, you should know, is a dollar an ounce, and Harrie must needscontent herself with "the American, " which could be had for fifty cents;and so, of course, after she had spent her money, and made her littlesilk bags, and put them away into her bureau drawers, Myron never told_her, _ for all her pains, that she reminded him of a heliotrope with thedew on it. One day a pink silk bag fell out from under her dress, whereshe had tucked it. 

"What's all this nonsense, Harrie?" said her husband, in a sharp tone. 

At another time, the Doctor and Pauline were driving upon the beach atsunset, when, turning a sudden corner, Miss Dallas cried out, in realdelight, --

"See! That beautiful creature! Who can it be?"

And there was Harrie, out on a rock in the opal surf, --a little scarletmermaid, combing her hair with her thin fingers, from which the wateralmost washed the wedding ring. It was--who knew how long, since thepretty bathing-suit had been taken down from the garret nails? Whatsudden yearning for the wash of waves, and the spring of girlhood, andthe consciousness that one is fair to see, had overtaken her? Shewatched through her hair and her fingers for the love in her husband'seyes. 

But he waded out to her, ill-pleased. 

"Harrie, this is very imprudent, --very! I don't see what could havepossessed you!"

Myron Sharpe loved his wife. Of course he did. He began, about thistime, to state the fact to himself several times a day. Had she not beenall the world to him when he wooed and won her in her rosy, ripeningdays? Was she not all the world to him now that a bit of searness hadcrept upon her, in a married life of eight hard-working years?

That she _had_ grown a little sear, he felt somewhat keenly of late. Shehad a dreary, draggled look at breakfast, after the children had criedat night, --and the nights when Mrs. Sharpe's children did not cry werelike angels' visits. It was perhaps the more noticeable, because MissDallas had a peculiar color and coolness and sparkle in the morning, like that of opening flowers. _She_ had not been up till midnight with asick baby. 

Harrie was apt to be too busy in the kitchen to run and meet him when hecame home at dusk. Or, if she came, it was with her sleeves rolled upand an apron on. Miss Dallas sat at the window; the lace curtain wavedabout her; she nodded and smiled as he walked up the path. In theevening Harrie talked of Rocko, or the price of butter; she did notventure beyond, poor thing! since her experience with Tennessee. 

Miss Dallas quoted Browning, and discussed Goethe, and talked Parepa;and they had no lights, and the September moon shone in. Sometimes Mrs. Sharpe had mending to do, and, as she could not sew on her husband'sbuttons satisfactorily by moonlight, would slip into the dining-roomwith kerosene and mosquitoes for company. The Doctor may have noticed, or he may not, how comfortably he could, if he made the proper effort, pass the evening without her. 

But Myron Sharpe loved his wife. To be sure he did. If his wife doubtedit, --but why should she doubt it? Who thought she doubted it? If shedid, she gave no sign. Her eyes, he observed, had brightened, of late;and when they went to her from the moonlit parlor, there was such apretty color upon her cheeks, that he used to stoop and kiss them, whileMiss Dallas discreetly occupied herself in killing mosquitoes. Of coursehe loved his wife!

It was observable that, in proportion to the frequency with which hefound it natural to remark his fondness for Harrie, his attentions toher increased. He inquired tenderly after her headaches; he brought herflowers, when he and Miss Dallas walked in the autumn woods; he wasparticular about her shawls and wraps; he begged her to sail and drivewith them; he took pains to draw his chair beside hers on the porch; hepatted her hands, and played with her soft hair. 

Harrie's clear eyes puzzled over this for a day or two; but by and byit might have been noticed that she refused his rides, shawled herself, was apt to be with the children when he called her, and shrank, in aquiet way, from his touch. 

She went into her room one afternoon, and locked the children out. Aneast wind blew, and the rain fell drearily. The Doctor and Pauline wereplaying chess down stairs; she should not be missed. She took out herwedding-dress from the drawer where she had laid it tenderly away; thehoar-frost and fretted pearl fell down upon her faded morning-dress; thelittle creamy gloves hung loosely upon her worn fingers. Poor littlegloves! Poor little pearly dress! She felt a kind of pity for theirinnocence and ignorance and trustfulness. Her hot tears fell and spottedthem. What if there were any way of creeping back through them to belittle Harrie Bird again? Would she take it?

Her children's voices sounded crying for her in the hall. Three innocentbabies--and how many more?--to grow into life under the shadow of awrecked and loveless home! What had she done? What had they done?

Harrie's was a strong, healthy little soul, with a strong, healthy loveof life; but she fell down there that dreary afternoon, prone upon thenursery floor, among the yellow wedding lace, and prayed God to let herdie. 

Yet Myron Sharpe loved his wife, you understand. Discussing electiveaffinities down there over the chessboard with Miss Dallas, --he lovedhis wife, most certainly; and, pray, why was she not content?

It was quite late when they came up for Harrie. She had fallen into asleep or faint, and the window had been open all the time. Her eyesburned sharply, and she complained of a chill, which did not leave herthe next day nor the next. 

One morning, at the breakfast-table, Miss Dallas calmly observed thatshe should go home on Friday. 

Dr. Sharpe dropped his cup; Harrie wiped up the tea. 

"My dear Miss Dallas--surely--we cannot let you go yet! Harrie! Can'tyou keep your friend?"

Harrie said the proper thing in a low tone. Pauline repeated herdetermination with much decision, and was afraid that her visit had beenmore of a burden than Harrie, with all her care, was able to bear. Dr. Sharpe pushed back his chair noisily, and left the room. 

He went and stood by the parlor window. The man's face was white. Whatbusiness had the days to close down before him like a granite wall, because a woman with long trains and white hands was going out of them?Harrie's patient voice came in through the open door:--

"Yes, yes, yes, Rocko; mother is tired to-day; wait a minute. "

Pauline, sweeping by the piano, brushed the keys a little, and sang:--

 "Drifting, drifting on and on, Mast and oar and rudder gone, Fatal danger for each one, We helpless as in dreams. "

What had he been about?

The air grew sweet with the sudden scent of heliotrope, and Miss Dallaspushed aside the curtain gently. 

"I may have that sail across the bay before I go? It promises to be fairto-morrow. "

He hesitated. 

"I suppose it will be our last, " said the lady, softly. 

She was rather sorry when she had spoken, for she really did not meananything, and was surprised at the sound of her own voice. 

But they took the sail. 

Harrie watched them off--her husband did not invite her to go on thatoccasion--with that stealthy sharpness in her eyes. Her lips and handsand forehead were burning. She had been cold all day. A sound like thetolling of a bell beat in her ears. The children's voices were chokedand distant. She wondered if Biddy were drunk, she seemed to dance aboutso at her ironing-table, and wondered if she must dismiss her, and whocould supply her place. She tried to put my room in order, for she wasexpecting me that night by the last train, but gave up the undertakingin weariness and confusion. 

In fact, if Harrie had been one of the Doctor's patients, he would havesent her to bed and prescribed for brain-fever. As she was not apatient, but only his wife, he had not found out that anything ailedher. 

Nothing happened while he was gone, except that a friend of Biddy's"dropped in, " and Mrs. Sharpe, burning and shivering in hersewing-chair, dreamily caught through the open door, and dreamilyrepeated to herself, a dozen words of compassionate Irish brogue:--

"Folks as laves folks cryin' to home and goes sailin' round with otherwomen--"

Then the wind latched the door. 

The Doctor and Miss Dallas drew in their oars, and floated softly. 

There were gray and silver clouds overhead, and all the light upon thesea slanted from low in the west: it was a red light, in which the baygrew warm; it struck across Pauline's hands, which she dipped, as themood took her, into the waves, leaning upon the side of the boat, looking down into the water. One other sail only was to be seen upon thebay. They watched it for a while. It dropped into the west, and sunkfrom sight. 

They were silent for a time, and then they talked of friendship, andnature, and eternity, and then were silent for a time again, and thenspoke--in a very general and proper way--of separation and communion inspirit, and broke off softly, and the boat rose and fell upon the strongoutgoing tide. 

"Drifting, drifting on and on, " hummed Pauline. 

The west, paling a little, left a haggard look upon the Doctor's face. 

"An honest man, " the Doctor was saying, "an honest man, who loves hiswife devotedly, but who cannot find in her that sympathy which hishigher nature requires, that comprehension of his intellectual needs, that--"

"I always feel a deep compassion for such a man, " interrupted MissDallas, gently. 

"Such a man, " questioned the Doctor in a pensive tone, "need not bedebarred, by the shallow conventionalities of an unappreciative world, from a friendship which will rest, strengthen, and ennoble his wearysoul?"

"Certainly not, " said Pauline, with her eyes upon the water; dullyellow, green, and indigo shades were creeping now upon its ruddiness. 

"Pauline, "--Dr. Sharpe's voice was low, --"Pauline!"

Pauline turned her beautiful head. "There are marriages for this world;true and honorable marriages, but for this world. But there is amarriage for eternity, --a marriage of souls. "

Now Myron Sharpe is not a fool, but that is precisely what he said toMiss Pauline Dallas, out in the boat on that September night. If wisermen than Myron Sharpe never uttered more unpardonable nonsense undersimilar circumstances, cast your stones at him. 

"Perhaps so, " said Miss Dallas, with a sigh; "but see! How dark it hasgrown while we have been talking. We shall be caught in a squall; but Ishall not be at all afraid--with you. "

They were caught indeed, not only in a squall, but in the steady forceof a driving northeasterly storm setting in doggedly with a very uglyfog. If Miss Dallas was not at all afraid--with him, she wasnevertheless not sorry when they grated safely on the dull white beach. 

They had had a hard pull in against the tide. Sky and sea were black. The fog crawled like a ghost over flat and cliff and field. The rainbeat upon them as they turned to walk up the beach. 

Pauline stopped once suddenly. 

"What was that?"

"I heard nothing. "

"A cry, --I fancied a cry down there in the fog. "

They went back, and walked down the slippery shore for a space. MissDallas took off her hat to listen. 

"You will take cold, " said Dr. Sharpe, anxiously. She put it on; sheheard nothing, --she was tired and excited, he said. 

They walked home together. Miss Dallas had sprained her white wrist, trying to help at the oars; he drew it gently through his arm. 

It was quite dark when they reached the house. No lamps were lighted. The parlor window had been left open, and the rain was beating in. "Howcareless in Harrie!" said her husband, impatiently. 

He remembered those words, and the sound of his own voice in sayingthem, for a long time to come; he remembers them now, indeed, I fancy, on rainy nights when the house is dark. 

The hall was cold and dreary. No table was set for supper. The childrenwere all crying. Dr. Sharpe pushed open the kitchen door with a sternface. 

"Biddy! Biddy! what does all this mean? Where is Mrs. Sharpe?"

"The Lord only knows what it manes, or where is Mrs. Sharpe, " saidBiddy, sullenly. "It's high time, in me own belafe, for her husband tocome ashkin' and inquirin' her close all in a hape on the floorupstairs, with her bath-dress gone from the nails, and the front doorswingin', --me never findin' of it out till it cooms tay-time, with allthe children cryin' on me, and me head shplit with the noise, and--"

Dr. Sharpe strode in a bewildered way to the front door. Oddly enough, the first thing he did was to take down the thermometer and look at it. Gone out to bathe in a temperature like that! His mind ran likelightning, while he hung the thing back upon its nail, over Harrie'sancestry. Was there not a traditionary great-uncle who died in anasylum? The whole future of three children with an insane mother spreaditself out before him while he was buttoning his overcoat. 

"Shall I go and help you find her?" asked Miss Dallas, tremulously; "orshall I stay and look after hot flannels and--things? What shall I do?"

"_I_ don't care what you do!" said the Doctor, savagely. To his justicebe it recorded that he did not. He would not have exchanged one glimpseof Harrie's little homely face just then for an eternity ofsunset-sailing with the "friend of his soul. " A sudden cold loathing ofher possessed him; he hated the sound of her soft voice; he hated therustle of her garments, as she leaned against the door with herhandkerchief at her eyes. Did he remember at that moment an old vow, spoken on an old October day, to that little missing face? Did hecomfort himself thus, as he stepped out into the storm, "You have'trusted her, ' Myron Sharpe, as 'your best earthly friend'"?

As luck, or providence or God--whichever word you prefer--decreed it, the Doctor had but just shut the door when he saw me driving from thestation through the rain. I heard enough of the story while he washelping me down the carriage steps. I left my bonnet and bag with MissDallas, pulled my water-proof over my head, and we turned our faces tothe sea without a word. 

The Doctor is a man who thinks and acts rapidly in emergencies, andlittle time was lost about help and lights. Yet when all was done whichcould be done, we stood there upon the slippery weed-strewn sand, andlooked in one another's faces helplessly. Harrie's little boat was gone. The sea thundered out beyond the bar. The fog hung, a dead weight, upona buried world. Our lanterns cut it for a foot or two in a ghostly way, throwing a pale white light back upon our faces and the weeds and bitsof wreck under our feet. 

The tide had turned. We put out into the surf not knowing what else todo, and called for Harrie; we leaned on our oars to listen, and heardthe water drip into the boat, and the dull thunder beyond the bar; wecalled again, and heard a frightened sea-gull scream. 

"_This_ yere's wastin' valooable time, " said Hansom, decidedly. Iforgot to say that it was George Hansom whom Myron had picked up to helpus. Anybody in Lime will tell you who George Hansom is, --a clear-eyed, open-hearted sailor; a man to whom you would turn in trouble asinstinctively as a rheumatic man turns to the sun. 

I cannot accurately tell you what he did with us that night. I haveconfused memories of searching shore and cliffs and caves; of touchingat little islands and inlets that Harrie fancied; of the peculiar echowhich answered our shouting; of the look that settled little by littleabout Dr. Sharpe's mouth; of the sobbing of the low wind; of the flareof lanterns on gaping, green waves; of spots of foam that writhed likenests of white snakes; of noticing the puddles in the bottom of theboat, and of wondering confusedly what they would do with mytravelling-dress, at the very moment when I saw--I was the first to seeit--little empty boat; of our hauling alongside of the tossing, silentthing; of a bit of a red scarf that lay coiled in its stern; of ourdrifting by, and speaking never a word; of our coasting along after thatfor a mile down the bay, because there was nothing in the world to takeus there but the dread of seeing the Doctor's eyes when we should turn. 

It was there that we heard the first cry. 

"It's shoreward!" said Hansom. 

"It is seaward!" cried the Doctor. 

"It is behind us!" said I. 

Where was it? A sharp, sobbing cry, striking the mist three or fourtimes in rapid succession, --hushing suddenly, --breaking into shriekslike a frightened child's, --dying plaintively down. 

We struggled desperately after it, through the fog. Wind and water tookthe sound up and tossed it about. Confused and bewildered, we beat aboutit and about it; it was behind us, before us, at our right, at ourleft, --crying on in a blind, aimless way, making us no replies, --beckoningus, slipping from us, mocking us utterly. 

The Doctor stretched his hands out upon the solid wall of mist; hegroped with them like a man struck blind. 

"To die there, --in my very hearing, --without a chance--"

And while the words were upon his lips the cries ceased. 

He turned a gray face slowly around, shivered a little, then smiled alittle, then began to argue with ghastly cheerfulness:--

"It must be only for a moment, you know. We shall hear it again, --I amquite sure we shall it again, Hansom!"

Hansom, making a false stroke, I believe for the first time in his life, snapped an oar and overturned a lantern. Some drift-wood, covered withslimy weeds, washed heavily up at our feet. I remember that a littledisabled ground-sparrow, chased by the tide, was fluttering and drowningjust in sight, and that Myron drew it out of the water, and held it upfor a moment to his cheek. 

Bending over the ropes, George spoke between his teeth to me:--

"It may be a night's job on 't, findin' of the body. "

"The WHAT?"

The poor little sparrow dropped from Dr. Sharpe's hand. He took a stepbackward, scanned our faces, sat down dizzily, and fell over upon thesand. 

He is a man of good nerves and great self-possession, but he fell likea woman, and lay like the dead. 

"It's no place for him, " Hansom said, softly. "Get him home. Me and theneighbors can do the rest. Get him home, and put his baby into his arms, and shet the door, and go about your business. "

I had left him in the dark on the office floor at last. Miss Dallas andI sat in the cold parlor and looked at each other. 

The fire was low and the lamp dull. The rain beat in an uncanny way uponthe windows. I never like to hear the rain upon the windows. I liked itless than usual that night, and was just trying to brighten the fire alittle, when the front door blew open. 

"Shut it, please, " said I, between the jerks of my poker. 

But Miss Dallas looked over her shoulder and shivered. 

"Just look at that latch!" I looked at that latch. 

It rose and fell in a feeble fluttering way, --was still for aminute, --rose and fell again. 

When the door swung in and Harrie--or the ghost of her--staggered intothe chilly room and fell down in a scarlet heap at my feet, Paulinebounded against the wall with a scream which pierced into the darkoffice where the Doctor lay with his face upon the floor. 

It was long before we knew how it happened. Indeed, I suppose we havenever known it all. How she glided down, a little red wraith, throughthe dusk and damp to her boat; how she tossed about, with some dim, delirious idea of finding Myron on the ebbing waves; that she foundherself stranded and tangled at last in the long, matted grass of thatmuddy cove, started to wade home, and sunk in the ugly ooze, held, chilled, and scratched by the sharp grass, blinded and frightened by thefog, and calling, as she thought of it, for help; that in the firstshallow wash of the flowing tide she must have struggled free, and foundher way home across the fields, --she can tell us, but she can tell nomore. 

This very morning on which I write, an unknown man, imprisoned in thesame spot in the same way overnight, was found by George Hansom deadthere from exposure in the salt grass. 

It was the walk home, and only that, which could have saved her. 

Yet for many weeks we fought, her husband and I, hand to hand withdeath, seeming to _see_ the life slip out of her, and watching forwandering minutes when she might look upon us with sane eyes. 

We kept her--just. A mere little wreck, with drawn lips, and great eyes, and shattered nerves, --but we kept her. 

I remember one night, when she had fallen into her first healthful nap, that the Doctor came down to rest a few minutes in the parlor where Isat alone. Pauline was washing the tea-things. 

He began to pace the room with a weary abstracted look, --he was muchworn by watching, --and, seeing that he was in no mood for words, I tookup a book which lay upon the table. It chanced to be one of Alger's, which somebody had lent to the Doctor before Harrie's illness; it was amarked book, and I ran my eye over the pencilled passages. I recollecthaving been struck with this one: "A man's best friend is a wife of goodsense and good heart, whom he loves and who loves him. "

"You believe that?" said Myron, suddenly, behind my shoulder. 

"I believe that a man's wife ought to be his best friend, --in everysense of the word, his _best friend, _--or she ought never to be hiswife. "

"And if--there will be differences of temperament, and--other things. Ifyou were a man now, for instance, Miss Hannah--"

I interrupted him with hot cheeks and sudden courage. 

"If I were a man, and my wife were _not_ the best friend I had or couldhave in the world, _nobody should ever know it, --she, least ofall, --Myron Sharpe!_"

Young people will bear a great deal of impertinence from an old lady, but we had both gone further than we meant to. I closed Mr. Alger with asnap, and went up to Harrie. 

The day that Mrs. Sharpe sat up in the easy-chair for two hours, MissDallas, who had felt called upon to stay and nurse her dear Harrie torecovery, and had really been of service, detailed on duty among thebabies, went home. 

Dr. Sharpe drove her to the station. I accompanied them at his request. Miss Dallas intended, I think, to look a little pensive, but had herlunch to cram into a very full travelling-bag, and forgot it. TheDoctor, with clear, courteous eyes, shook hands, and wished her apleasant journey. 

He drove home in silence, and went directly to his wife's room. A brightblaze flickered on the old-fashioned fireplace, and the walls bowed withpretty dancing shadows. Harrie, all alone, turned her face weakly andsmiled. 

Well, they made no fuss about it, after all. Her husband came and stoodbeside her; a cricket on which one of the baby's dresses had beenthrown, lay between them; it seemed, for the moment, as if he dared notcross the tiny barrier. Something of that old fancy about the lightsupon the altar may have crossed his thought. 

"So Miss Dallas has fairly gone, Harrie, " said he, pleasantly, after apause. 

"Yes. She has been very kind to the children while I have been sick. "

"Very. "

"You must miss her, " said poor Harrie, trembling; she was very weak yet. 

The Doctor knocked away the cricket, folded his wife's two shadowyhands into his own, and said:--

"Harrie we have no strength to waste, either of us, upon a scene; but Iam sorry, and I love you. "

She broke all down at that, and, dear me! they almost had a scene inspite of themselves. For O, she had always known what a little goose shewas; and Pauline never meant any harm, and how handsome she was, youknow! only _she_ didn't have three babies to look after, nor a snubbednose either, and the sachet powder was only American, and the veryservants knew, and, O Myron! she _had_ wanted to be dead so long, andthen--

"Harrie!" said the Doctor, at his wit's end, "this will never do in theworld. I believe--I declare!--Miss Hannah!--I believe I must send you tobed. "

"And then I'm SUCH a little skeleton!" finished Harrie, royally, with agreat gulp. 

Dr. Sharpe gathered the little skeleton all into a heap in his arms, --itwas a very funny heap, by the way, but that doesn't matter, --and to thebest of my knowledge and belief he cried just about as hard as she did. 

The Tenth of January. 

The city of Lawrence is unique in its way. 

For simooms that scorch you and tempests that freeze; for sand-heapsand sand-hillocks and sand-roads; for men digging sand, for womenshaking off sand, for minute boys crawling in sand; for sand in thechurch-slips and the gingerbread-windows, for sand in your eyes, yournose, your mouth, down your neck? up your sleeves, under your _chignon_, down your throat; for unexpected corners where tornadoes lie in wait;for "bleak, uncomforted" sidewalks, where they chase you, dog you, confront you, strangle you, twist you, blind you, turn your umbrellawrong side out; for "dimmykhrats" and bad ice-cream; for unutterablecircus-bills and religious tea-parties; for uncleared ruins, and millsthat spring up in a night; for jaded faces and busy feet; for an air ofyouth and incompleteness at which you laugh, and a consciousness ofgrowth and greatness which you respect, --it--

I believe, when I commenced that sentence, I intended to say that itwould be difficult to find Lawrence's equal. 

Of the twenty-five thousand souls who inhabit that city, ten thousandare operatives in the factories. Of these ten thousand two thirds aregirls. 

These pages are written as one sets a bit of marble to mark a mound. Ilinger over them as we linger beside the grave of one who sleeps well;half sadly, half gladly, --more gladly than sadly, --but hushed. 

The time to see Lawrence is when the mills open or close. So languidlythe dull-colored, inexpectant crowd wind in! So briskly they comebounding out! Factory faces have a look of their own, --not only theircommon dinginess, and a general air of being in a hurry to find thewash-bowl, but an appearance of restlessness, --often of enviousrestlessness, not habitual in most departments of "healthy labor. " Watchthem closely: you can read their histories at a venture. A widow this, in the dusty black, with she can scarcely remember how many mouths tofeed at home. Worse than widowed that one: she has put her baby out toboard, --and humane people know what that means, --to keep the littlething beyond its besotted father's reach. There is a group who have"just come over. " A child's face here, old before its time. Thatgirl--she climbs five flights of stairs twice a day--will climb no morestairs for herself or another by the time the clover-leaves are green. "The best thing about one's grave is that it will be level, " she washeard once to say. Somebody muses a little here, --she is to be marriedthis winter. There is a face just behind her whose fixed eyes repel andattract you; there may be more love than guilt in them, more despairthan either. 

Had you stood in some unobserved corner of Essex Street, at four o'clockone Saturday afternoon towards the last of November, 1859, watching theimpatient stream pour out of the Pemberton Mill, eager with a saddeningeagerness for its few holiday hours, you would have observed one girlwho did not bound. 

She was slightly built, and undersized; her neck and shoulders wereclosely muffled, though the day was mild; she wore a faded scarlet hoodwhich heightened the pallor of what must at best have been a pallidface. It was a sickly face, shaded off with purple shadows, but with acertain wiry nervous strength about the muscles of the mouth and chin:it would have been a womanly, pleasant mouth, had it not been crossed bya white scar, which attracted more of one's attention than either thewomanliness or pleasantness. Her eyes had light long lashes, and shonethrough them steadily. 

You would have noticed as well, had you been used to analyzing crowds, another face, --the two were side by side, --dimpled with pink and whiteflushes, and framed with bright black hair. One would laugh at this girland love her, scold her and pity her, caress her and pray for her, --thenforget her perhaps. 

The girls from behind called after her: "Del! Del Ivory! look overthere!"

Pretty Del turned her head. She had just flung a smile at a young clerkwho was petting his mustache in a shop-window, and the smile lingered. 

One of the factory boys was walking alone across the Common in hisfactory clothes. 

"Why, there's Dick! Sene, do you see?"

Sene's scarred mouth moved slightly, but she made no reply. She had seenhim five minutes ago. 

One never knows exactly whether to laugh or cry over them, catchingtheir chatter as they file past the show-windows of the long, showystreet. 

"Look a' that pink silk with the figures on it!"

"I've seen them as is betther nor that in the ould counthree. --PatsyMalorrn, let alon' hangin' onto the shawl of me!"

"That's Mary Foster getting out of that carriage with the two whitehorses, --she that lives in the brown house with the cupilo. "

"Look at her dress trailin' after her. I'd like my dresses trailin'after me. "

"Well, may they be good, --these rich folks!"

"That's so. I'd be good if I was rich; wouldn't you, Moll?"

"You'd keep growing wilder than ever, if you went to hell, Meg Match:yes you would, because my teacher said so. "

"So, then, he wouldn't marry her, after all; and she--"

"Going to the circus to-night, Bess?"

"I can't help crying, Jenny. You don't _know_ how my head aches! Itaches, and it aches, and it seems as if it would never stop aching. Iwish--I wish I was dead, Jenny!"

They separated at last, going each her own way, --pretty Del Ivory toher boarding-place by the canal, her companion walking home alone. 

This girl, Asenath Martyn, when left to herself, fell into a contenteddream not common to girls who have reached her age, --especially girlswho have seen the phases of life which she had seen. Yet few of thefaces in the streets that led her home were more gravely lined. Shepuzzled one at the first glance, and at the second. An artist, meetingher musing on a canal-bridge one day, went home and painted a May-flowerbudding in February. 

It was a damp, unwholesome place, the street in which she lived, cutshort by a broken fence, a sudden steep, and the water; filled withchildren, --they ran from the gutters after her, as she passed, --andfilled to the brim; it tipped now and then, like an over-fullsoup-plate, and spilled out two or three through the break in the fence. 

Down in the corner, sharp upon the water, the east-winds broke about alittle yellow house, where no children played; an old man's face watchedat a window, and a nasturtium-vine crawled in the garden. The brokenpanes of glass about the place were well mended, and a clever littlegate, extemporized from a wild grape-vine, swung at the entrance. Itwas not an old man's work. 

Asenath went in with expectant eyes; they took in the room at a glance, and fell. 

"Dick hasn't come, father?"

"Come and gone child; didn't want any supper, he said. Your 're an hourbefore time, Senath. "

"Yes. Didn't want any supper, you say? I don't see why not. "

"No more do I, but it's none of our concern as I knows on; very like thepickles hurt him for dinner; Dick never had an o'er-strong stomach, asyou might say. But you don't tell me how it m' happen you're let out atfour o'clock, Senath, " half complaining. 

"O, something broke in the machinery, father; you know you wouldn'tunderstand if I told you what. "

He looked up from his bench, --he cobbled shoes there in the corner onhis strongest days, --and after her as she turned quickly away and upstairs to change her dress. She was never exactly cross with her father;but her words rang impatiently sometimes. 

She came down presently, transformed, as only factory-girls aretransformed, by the simple little toilet she had been making; her thin, soft hair knotted smoothly, the tips of her fingers rosy from the water, her pale neck well toned by her gray stuff dress and cape;--Asenathalways wore a cape: there was one of crimson flannel, with a hood, thatshe had meant to wear to-night; she had thought about it coming homefrom the mill; she was apt to wear it on Saturdays and Sundays; Dick hadmore time at home. Going up stairs to-night, she had thrown it away intoa drawer, and shut the drawer with a snap; then opened it softly, andcried a little; but she had not taken it out. 

As she moved silently about the room, setting the supper-table for two, crossing and recrossing the broad belt of sunlight that fell upon thefloor, it was easy to read the sad story of the little hooded capes. 

They might have been graceful shoulders. The hand which had scarred herface had rounded and bent them, --her own mother's hand. 

Of a bottle always on the shelf; of brutal scowls where smiles shouldbe; of days when she wandered dinnerless and supperless in the streetsthrough loathing of her home; of nights when she sat out in thesnow-drifts through terror of her home; of a broken jug one day, a blow, a fall, then numbness, and the silence of the grave, --she had herdistant memories; of waking on a sunny afternoon, in bed, with a littlecracked glass upon the opposite wall; of creeping out and up to it inher night-dress; of the ghastly twisted thing that looked back at her. Through the open window she heard the children laughing and leaping inthe sweet summer air. She crawled into bed and shut her eyes. Sheremembered stealing out at last, after many days, to the grocery roundthe corner for a pound of coffee. "Humpback! humpback!" cried thechildren, --the very children who could leap and laugh. 

One day she and little Del Ivory made mud-houses after school. 

"I'm going to have a house of my own, when I'm grown up, " said prettyDel; "I shall have a red carpet and some curtains; my husband will buyme a piano. "

"So will mine, I guess, " said Sene, simply. 

"_Yours!"_ Del shook back her curls; "who do you suppose would evermarry _you_?"

One night there was a knocking at the door, and a hideous, sodden thingborne in upon a plank. The crowded street, tired of tipping out littlechildren, had tipped her mother staggering through the broken fence. Atthe funeral she heard some one say, "How glad Sene must be!"

Since that, life had meant three things, --her father, the mills, andRichard Cross. 

"You're a bit put out that the young fellow didn't stay to supper, --eh, Senath?" the old man said, laying down his boot. 

"Put out! Why should I be? His time is his own. It's likely to be theUnion that took him out, --such a fine day for the Union! I'm sure Inever expected him to go to walk with me _every_ Saturday afternoon. I'mnot a fool to tie him up to the notions of a crippled girl. Supper isready, father. "

But her voice rasped bitterly. Life's pleasures were so new and lateand important to her, poor thing! It went hard to miss the least ofthem. Very happy people will not understand exactly how hard. 

Old Martyn took off his leather apron with a troubled face, and, as hepassed his daughter, gently laid his tremulous, stained hand upon herhead. He felt her least uneasiness, it would seem, as a chameleon feelsa cloud upon the sun. 

She turned her face softly and kissed him. But she did not smile. 

She had planned a little for this holiday supper; saving threemellow-cheeked Louise Bonnes--expensive pears just then--to add to theirbread and molasses. She brought them out from the closet, and watchedher father eat them. 

"Going out again Senath?" he asked, seeing that she went for her hat andshawl, u and not a mouthful have you eaten! Find your old father dullcompany hey? Well, well!"

She said something about needing the air; the mill was hot; she shouldsoon be back; she spoke tenderly and she spoke truly, but she went outinto the windy sunset with her little trouble, and forgot him. The oldman, left alone, sat for a while with his head sunk upon his breast. Shewas all he had in the world, --this one little crippled girl that theworld had dealt hardly with. She loved him; but he was not, probablywould never be, to her exactly what she was to him. Usually he forgotthis. Sometimes he quite understood it, as to-night. 

Asenath, with the purpose only of avoiding Dick, and of finding a stillspot where she might think her thoughts undisturbed, wandered away overthe eastern bridge, and down to the river's brink. It was a moody place;such a one as only apathetic or healthy natures (I wonder if that istautology!) can healthfully yield to. The bank sloped steeply; a fringeof stunted aspens and willows sprang from the frozen sand: it was asickening, airless place in summer, --it was damp and desolate now. Therewas a sluggish wash of water under foot, and a stretch of dreary flatsbehind. Belated locomotives shrieked to each other across the river, andthe wind bore down the current the roar and rage of the dam. Shadowswere beginning to skulk under the huge brown bridge. The silent millsstared up and down and over the streams with a blank, unvarying stare. An oriflamme of scarlet burned in the west, flickered dully in thedirty, curdling water, flared against the windows of the Pemberton, which quivered and dripped, Asenath thought, as if with blood. 

She sat down on a gray stone, wrapped in her gray shawl, curtained aboutby the aspens from the eye of passers on the bridge. She had a fancy forthis place when things went ill with her. She had always borne hertroubles alone, but she must be alone to bear them. 

She knew very well that she was tired and nervous that afternoon, andthat, if she could reason quietly about this little neglect of Dick's, it would cease to annoy her. Indeed, why should she be annoyed? Had henot done everything for her, been everything to her, for two long, sweetyears? She dropped her head with a shy smile. She was never tired ofliving over these two years. She took positive pleasure in recalling thewretchedness in which they found her, for the sake of their dear relief. Many a time, sitting with her happy face hidden in his arms, she hadlaughed softly, to remember the day on which he came to her. It was attwilight, and she was tired. Her reels had troubled her all theafternoon; the overseer was cross; the day was hot and long. Somebody onthe way home had said in passing her: "Look at that girl! I'd killmyself if I looked like that": it was in a whisper, but she heard it. All life looked hot and long; the reels would always be out of order;the overseer would never be kind. Her temples would always throb, andher back would ache. People would always say, "Look at that girl!"

"Can you direct me to--". She looked up; she had been sitting on thedoorstep with her face in her hands. Dick stood there with his cap off. He forgot that he was to inquire the way to Newbury Street, when he sawthe tears on her shrunken cheeks. Dick could never bear to see a womansuffer. 

"I wouldn't cry, " he said simply, sitting down beside her. Telling agirl not to cry is an infallible recipe for keeping her at it. Whatcould the child do, but sob as if her heart would break? Of course hehad the whole story in ten minutes, she his in another ten. It wascommon and short enough:--a "Down-East" boy, fresh from his father'sfarm, hunting for work and board, --a bit homesick here in the strange, unhomelike city, it might be, and glad of some one to say so to. 

What more natural than that, when her father came out and was pleasedwith the lad, there should be no more talk of Newbury Street; that thelittle yellow house should become his home; that he should swing thefantastic gate, and plant the nasturtiums; that his life should grow tobe one with hers and the old man's, his future and theirs uniteunconsciously?

She remembered--it was not exactly pleasant, somehow, to remember itto-night--just the look of his face when they came into the house thatsummer evening, and he for the first time saw what she was, her capehaving fallen off, in the full lamplight. His kindly blue eyes widenedwith shocked surprise, and fell; when he raised them, a pity like amother's had crept into them; it broadened and brightened as time slidby, but it never left them. 

So you see, after that, life unfolded in a burst of little surprises forAsenath. If she came home very tired, some one said, "I am sorry. " Ifshe wore a pink ribbon, she heard a whisper, "It suits you. " If shesang a little song, she knew that somebody listened. 

"I did not know the world was like this!" cried the girl. 

After a time there came a night that he chanced to be out late, --theyhad planned an arithmetic lesson together, which he had forgotten, --andshe sat grieving by the kitchen fire. 

"You missed me so much then?" he said regretfully, standing with hishand upon her chair. She was trying to shell some corn; she dropped thepan, and the yellow kernels rolled away on the floor. 

"What should I have if I didn't have you?" she said, and caught herbreath. 

The young man paced to the window and back again. The firelight touchedher shoulders, and the sad, white scar. 

"You shall have me always, Asenath, " he made answer. He took her facewithin his hands and kissed it; and so they shelled the corn together, and nothing more was said about it. 

He had spoken this last spring of their marriage; but the girl, like allgirls, was shyly silent, and he had not urged it. 

Asenath started from her pleasant dreaming just as the oriflamme wasfurling into gray, suddenly conscious that she was not alone. Below her, quite on the brink of the water, a girl was sitting, --a girl with abright plaid shawl, and a nodding red feather in her hat. Her head wasbent, and her hair fell against a profile cut in pink-and-white. 

"Del is too pretty to be here alone so late, " thought Asenath, smilingtenderly. Good-natured Del was kind to her in a certain way, and sherather loved the girl. She rose to speak to her, but concluded, on asecond glance through the aspens, that Miss Ivory was quite able to takecare of herself. 

Del was sitting on an old log that jutted into the stream, dabbling inthe water with the tips of her feet. (Had she lived on The Avenue shecould not have been more particular about her shoemaker. ) Some one--itwas too dark to see distinctly--stood beside her, his eyes upon herface. Asenath could hear nothing, but she needed to hear nothing to knowhow the young fellow's eyes drank in the coquettish picture. Besides, itwas an old story. Del counted her rejected lovers by the score. 

"It's no wonder, " she thought in her honest way, standing still to watchthem with a sense of puzzled pleasure much like that with which shewatched the print-windows, --"it's no wonder they love her. I'd love herif I was a man: so pretty! so pretty! She's just good for nothing, Delis;--would let the kitchen fire go out, and wouldn't mend the baby'saprons; but I'd love her all the same; marry her, probably, and be sorryall my life. "

Pretty Del! Poor Del! Asenath wondered whether she wished that she werelike her; she could not quite make out; it would be pleasant to sit ona log and look like that; it would be more pleasant to be watched as Delwas watched just now; it struck her suddenly that Dick had never lookedlike this at her. 

The hum of their voices ceased while she stood there with her eyes uponthem; Del turned her head away with a sudden movement, and the young manleft her, apparently without bow or farewell, sprang up the bank at abound, and crushed the undergrowth with quick, uneasy strides. 

Asenath, with some vague idea that it would not be honorable to see hisface, --poor fellow!--shrank back into the aspens and the shadow. 

He towered tall in the twilight as he passed her, and a dull, umbergleam, the last of the sunset, struck him from the west. 

Struck it out into her sight, --the haggard struggling face, --RichardCross's face. 

Of course you knew it from the beginning, but remember that the girl didnot. She might have known it, perhaps, but she had not. 

Asenath stood up, sat down again. 

She had a distinct consciousness, for the moment, of seeing herselfcrouched down there under the aspens and the shadow, a humpbacked whitecreature, with distorted face and wide eyes. She remembered a pictureshe had somewhere seen of a little chattering goblin in a graveyard, andwas struck with the resemblance. Distinctly, too, she heard herselfsaying, with a laugh, she thought, "I might have known it; I might haveknown. "

Then the blood came through her heart with a hot rush, and she saw Delon the log, smoothing the red feather of her hat. She heard a man'sstep, too, that rang over the bridge, passed the toll-house, grew faint, grew fainter, died in the sand by the Everett Mill. 

Richard's face! Richard's face, looking--God help her!--as it had neverlooked at her; struggling--God pity him!--as it had never struggled forher. 

She shut her hands, into each other, and sat still a little while. Afaint hope came to her then perhaps, after all; her face lightenedgrayly, and she crept down the bank to Del. 

"I won't be a fool, " she said, "I'll make sure, --I'll make as sure asdeath. "

"Well, where did _you_ drop down from, Sene?" said Del, with a guiltystart. 

"From over the bridge, to be sure. Did you think I swam, or flew, orblew?"

"You came on me so sudden!" said Del, petulantly; "you nearly frightenedthe wits out of me. You didn't meet anybody on the bridge?" with a quicklook. 

"Let me see. " Asenath considered gravely. "There was one small boymaking faces, and two--no, three--dogs, I believe; that was all. "

"Oh!"

Del looked relieved, but fell silent. 

"You're sober, Del. Been sending off a lover, as usual?"

"I don't know anything about its being usual, " answered Del, in anaggrieved, coquettish way, "but there's been somebody here that liked mewell enough. "

"You like him, maybe? It's time you liked somebody, Del. "

Del curled the red feather about her fingers, and put her hat on overher eyes, then a little cry broke from her, half sob, half anger. 

"I might, perhaps, --I don't know. He's good. I think he'd let me have aparlor and a door-bell. But he's going to marry somebody else, you see. I sha'n't tell you his name, so you needn't ask. "

Asenath looked out straight upon the water. A dead leaf that had beencaught in an eddy attracted her attention; it tossed about for a minute, then a tiny whirlpool sucked it down. 

"I wasn't going to ask; it's nothing to me, of course. He doesn't carefor her then, --this other girl?"

"Not so much as he does for me. He didn't mean to tell me, but he saidthat I--that I looked so--pretty, it came right out. But there! Imustn't tell you any more. "

Del began to be frightened; she looked up sideways at Asenath's quietface. "I won't say another word, " and so chattered on, growing a littlecross; Asenath need not look so still, and sure of herself, --a merehumpbacked fright!

"He'll never break his engagement, not even for me; he's sorry for her, and all that. I think it's too bad. He's handsome. He makes me feel likesaying my prayers, too, he's so good! Besides, I want to be married. Ihate the mill. I hate to work. I'd rather be taken care of, --a sightrather. I feel bad enough about it to cry. "

Two tears rolled over her cheeks, and fell on the soft plaid shawl. Delwiped them away carefully with her rounded fingers. 

Asenath turned and looked at this Del Ivory long and steadily throughthe dusk. The pretty, shallow thing! The worthless, bewildering thing!

A fierce contempt for her pink-and-white, and tears and eyelashes andattitudes, came upon her; then a sudden sickening jealousy that turnedher faint where she sat. 

What did God mean, --Asenath believed in God, having so little else tobelieve in, --what did he mean, when he had blessed the girl all herhappy life with such wealth of beauty, by filling her careless handswith this one best, last gift? Why, the child could not hold such goldenlove! She would throw it away by and by. What a waste it was!

Not that she had these words for her thought, but she had the thoughtdistinctly through her dizzy pain. 

"So there's nothing to do about it, " said Del, pinning her shawl. "Wecan't have anything to say to each other, --unless anybody should die, oranything; and of course I'm not wicked enough to think of _that. _--Sene!Sene! what are you doing?"

Sene had risen slowly, stood upon the log, caught at an aspen-top, andswung out with it its whole length above the water. The slight treewrithed and quivered about the roots. Sene looked down and moved hermarred lips without sound. 

Del screamed and wrung her hands. It was an ugly sight!

"O don't, Sene, _don't!_ You'll drown yourself! you will be drowned! youwill be--O, what a start you gave me! What _were_ you doing, SenathMartyn?"

Sene swung slowly back, and sat down. 

"Amusing myself a little;--well, unless somebody died, you said? But Ibelieve I won't talk any more to-night. My head aches. Go home, Del. "

Del muttered a weak protest at leaving her there alone; but, with herbright face clouded and uncomfortable, went. 

Asenath turned her head to listen for the last rustle of her dress, thenfolded her arms, and, with her eyes upon the sluggish current, satstill. 

An hour and a half later, an Andover farmer, driving home across thebridge, observed on the river's edge--a shadow cut within a shadow--theoutline of a woman's figure, sitting perfectly still with folded arms. He reined up and looked down; but it sat quite still. 

"Hallo there!" he called; "you'll fall in if you don't look out!" forthe wind was strong, and it blew against the figure; but it did not movenor make reply. The Andover farmer looked over his shoulder with thesudden recollection of a ghost-story which he had charged hisgrandchildren not to believe last week, cracked his whip, and rumbledon. 

Asenath began to understand by and by that she was cold, so climbed thebank, made her way over the windy flats, the railroad, and the westernbridge confusedly with an idea of going home. She turned aside by thetoll-gate. The keeper came out to see what she was doing, but she keptout of his sight behind the great willow and his little blue house, --theblue house with the green blinds and red moulding. The dam thunderedthat night, the wind and the water being high. She made her way up aboveit, and looked in. She had never seen it so black and smooth there. Asshe listened to the roar, she remembered something that she hadread--was it in the Bible or the Ledger?--about seven thunders utteringtheir voices. 

"He's sorry for her, and all that, " they said. 

A dead bough shot down the current while she stood there, went over anddown, and out of sight, throwing up its little branches like helplesshands. 

It fell in with a thought of Asenath's, perhaps; at any rate she didnot like the looks of it, and went home. 

Over the bridge, and the canal, and the lighted streets, the fallscalled after her: "He's sorry for her, and all that. " The curtain wasdrawn aside when she came home, and she saw her father through thewindow, sitting alone, with his gray head bent. 

It occurred to her that she had often left him alone, --poor old father!It occurred to her, also, that she understood now what it was to bealone. Had she forgotten him in these two comforted, companioned years?

She came in weakly, and looked about. 

"Dick's in, and gone to bed, " said the old man, answering her look. "You're tired, Senath. "

"I am tired, father. "

She sunk upon the floor, --the heat of the room made her a littlefaint, --and laid her head upon his knee; oddly enough, she noticed thatthe patch on it had given way, --wondered how many days it had beenso, --whether he had felt ragged and neglected while she was busy aboutthat blue neck-tie for Dick. She put her hand up and smoothed thecorners of the rent. 

"You shall be mended up to-morrow, poor father!"

He smiled, pleased like a child to be remembered. She looked up athim, --at his gray hair and shrivelled face, at his blackened hands andbent shoulders, and dusty, ill-kept coat. What would it be like, if thedays brought her nothing but him?

"Something's the matter with my little gal? Tell father, can't ye?"

Her face flushed hot, as if she had done him wrong. She crept up intohis arms, and put her hands behind his rough old neck. 

"Would you kiss me, father? You don't think I'm too ugly to kiss, maybe, --you?"

She felt better after that. She had not gone to sleep now for many anight unkissed; it had seemed hard at first. 

When she had gone half-way up stairs, Dick came to the door of his roomon the first floor, and called her. He held the little kerosene lampover his head; his face was grave and pale. 

"I haven't said good night, Sene. "

She made no reply. 

"Asenath, good night. "

She stayed her steps upon the stairs without turning her head. Herfather had kissed her to-night. Was not that enough?

"Why, Sene, what's the matter with you?"

Dick mounted the stairs, and touched his lips to her forehead with agently compassionate smile. 

She fled from him with a cry like the cry of a suffocated creature, shuther door, and locked it with a ringing clang. 

"She's walked too far, and got a little nervous, " said Dick, screwing uphis lamp; "poor thing!"

Then he went into his room to look at Del's photograph awhile before heburned it up; for he meant to burn it up. 

Asenath, when she had locked her door, put her lamp before thelooking-glass and tore off her gray cape; tore it off so savagely thatthe button snapped and rolled away, --two little crystal semicircles liketears upon the floor. 

There was no collar about the neck of her dress, and this heightened theplainness and the pallor of her face. She shrank instinctively at thefirst sight of herself, and opened the drawer where the crimson cape wasfolded, but shut it resolutely. 

"I'll see the worst of it, " she said with pinched lips. She turnedherself about and about before the glass, letting the cruel light gloat, over her shoulders, letting the sickly shadows grow purple on her face. Then she put her elbows on the table and her chin into her hands, andso, for a motionless half-hour, studied the unrounded, uncolored, unlightened face that stared back at her; her eyes darkening at itseyes, her hair touching its hair, her breath dimming the outline of itsrepulsive mouth. 

By and by she dropped her head into her hands. The poor, mistaken face!She felt as if she would like to blot it out of the world, as her tearsused to blot out the wrong sums upon her slate. It had been so happy!But he was sorry for it, and all that. Why did a good God make suchfaces?

She slipped upon her knees, bewildered. 

"He _can't_ mean any harm nohow, " she said, speaking fast, and kneltthere and said it over till she felt sure of it. 

Then she thought of Del once more, --of her colors and sinuous springs, and little cries and chatter. 

After a time she found that she was growing faint, and so stole downinto the kitchen for some food. She stayed a minute to warm her feet. The fire was red and the clock was ticking. It seemed to her home-likeand comfortable, and she seemed to herself very homeless and lonely; soshe sat down on the floor, with her head in a chair, and cried as hardas she ought to have done four hours ago. 

She climbed into bed about one o'clock, having decided, in a dull way, to give Dick up to-morrow. 

But when to-morrow came he was up with a bright face, and built thekitchen fire for her, and brought in all the water, and helped her frythe potatoes, and whistled a little about the house, and worried at herpaleness, and so she said nothing about it. 

"I'll wait till night, " she planned, making ready for the mill. 

"O, I can't!" she cried at night. So other mornings came, and othernights. 

I am quite aware that, according to all romantic precedents, thisconduct was preposterous in Asenath, Floracita, in the novel, never sofar forgets the whole duty of a heroine as to struggle, waver, doubt, delay. It is proud and proper to free the young fellow; proudly andproperly she frees him; "suffers in silence"--till she marries anotherman; and (having had a convenient opportunity to refuse the originallover) overwhelms the reflective reader with a sense of poetic justiceand the eternal fitness of things. 

But I am not writing a novel, and, as the biographer of this simplefactory girl, am offered few advantages. 

Asenath was no heroine, you see. Such heroic elements as were inher--none could tell exactly what they were, or whether there were any:she was one of those people in whom it is easy to be quitemistaken;--her life had not been one to develop. She might have acertain pride of her own, under given circumstances; but plants grown ina cellar will turn to the sun at any cost; how could she go back intoher dark?

As for the other man to marry, he was out of the question. Then, nonelove with the tenacity of the unhappy; no life is so lavish of itself asthe denied life: to him that hath not shall be given, --and Asenath lovedthis Richard Cross. 

It might be altogether the grand and suitable thing to say to him, "Iwill not be your wife. " It might be that she would thus regain a strongshade of lost self-respect. It might be that she would make him happy, and give pleasure to Del. It might be that the two young people would beher "friends, " and love her in a way. 

But all this meant that Dick must go out of her life. Practically, shemust make up her mind to build the fires, and pump the water, and mendthe windows alone. In dreary fact, he would not listen when she sung;would not say, "You are tired, Sene"; would never kiss away an undriedtear. There would be nobody to notice the crimson cape, nobody to makeblue neck-ties for; none for whom to save the Bonnes de Jersey, or totake sweet, tired steps, or make dear, dreamy plans. To be sure, therewas her father; but fathers do not count for much in a time like this onwhich Sene had fallen. 

That Del Ivy was--Del Ivory, added intricacies to the question. It was avery unpoetic but undoubted fact that Asenath could in no way so insureDick's unhappiness as to pave the way to his marriage with the womanwhom he loved. There would be a few merry months, then slow worry anddisappointment; pretty Del accepted at last, not as the crown of hisyoung life, but as its silent burden and misery. Poor Dick! good Dick!Who deserved more wealth of wifely sacrifice? Asenath, thinking this, crimsoned with pain and shame. A streak of good common sense in the girltold her--though she half scorned herself for the conviction--that evena crippled woman who should bear all things and hope all things for hissake might blot out the memory of this rounded Del; that, no matter whatthe motive with which he married her, he would end by loving his wifelike other people. 

She watched him sometimes in the evenings, as he turned his kind eyesafter her over the library book which he was reading. 

"I know I could make him happy! I _know_ I could!" she muttered fiercelyto herself. 

November blew into December, December congealed into January, while shekept her silence. Dick, in his honorable heart, seeing that shesuffered, wearied himself with plans to make her eyes shine; brought hertwo pails of water instead of one, never forgot the fire, helped herhome from the mill. She saw him meet Del Ivory once upon Essex Streetwith a grave and silent bow; he never spoke with her now. He meant topay the debt he owed her down to the uttermost farthing; that grewplain. Did she try to speak her wretched secret, he suffocated her withkindness, struck her dumb with tender words. 

She used to analyze her life in those days, considering what it would bewithout him. To be up by half past five o'clock in the chill of all thewinter mornings, to build the fire and cook the breakfast and sweep thefloor, to hurry away, faint and weak, over the raw, slippery streets, toclimb at half past six the endless stairs and stand at the endless loom, and hear the endless wheels go buzzing round, to sicken in the oilysmells, and deafen at the remorseless noise, and weary of the rough girlswearing at the other end of the pass; to eat her cold dinner from alittle cold tin pail out on the stairs in the three-quarters-of-an-hourrecess; to come exhausted home at half past six at night, and get thesupper, and brush up about the shoemaker's bench, and be too weak toeat; to sit with aching shoulders and make the button-holes of her bestdress, or darn her father's stockings, till nine o'clock; to hear nobounding step or cheery whistle about the house; to creep into bed andlie there trying not to think, and wishing that so she might creep intoher grave, --this not for one winter, but for all the winters, --howshould _you_ like it, you young girls, with whom time runs like a story?

The very fact that her employers dealt honorably by her; that she wasfairly paid, and promptly, for her wearing toil; that the limit ofendurance was consulted in the temperature of the room, and her need ofrest in an occasional holiday, --perhaps, after all, in the mood she wasin, did not make this factory life more easy. She would have found itrather a relief to have somebody to complain of, --wherein she was likethe rest of us, I fancy. 

But at last there came a day--it chanced to be the ninth ofJanuary--when Asenath went away alone at noon, and sat where Merrimacksung his songs to her. She hid her face upon her knees, and listened andthought her own thoughts, till they and the slow torment of the winterseemed greater than she could bear. So, passing her hands confusedlyover her forehead, she said at last aloud, "That's what God means, Asenath Martyn!" and went back to work with a purpose in her eyes. 

She "asked out" a little earlier than usual, and went slowly home. Dickwas there before her; he had been taking a half-holiday. He had made thetea and toasted the bread for a little surprise. He came up and said, "Why, Sene, your hands are cold!" and warmed them for her in his own. 

After tea she asked him, would he walk out with her for a little while?and he in wonder went. 

The streets were brightly lighted, and the moon was up. The ice crackedcrisp under their feet. Sleighs, with two riders in each, shot merrilyby. People were laughing in groups before the shop-windows. In the glareof a jeweller's counter somebody was buying a wedding-ring, and a girlwith red cheeks was looking hard the other way. 

"Let's get away, " said Asenath, --"get away from here!"

They chose by tacit consent that favorite road of hers over the easternbridge. Their steps had a hollow, lonely ring on the frosted wood; shewas glad when the softness of the snow in the road received them. Shelooked back once at the water, wrinkled into thin ice on the edge for afoot or two, then open and black and still. 

"What are you doing?" asked Dick. She said that she was wondering howcold it was, and Dick laughed at her. 

They strolled on in silence for perhaps a mile of the desolate road. 

"Well, this is social!" said Dick at length; "how much farther do youwant to go? I believe you'd walk to Reading if nobody stopped you!"

She was taking slow, regular steps like an automaton, and lookingstraight before her. 

"How much farther? Oh!" She stopped and looked about her. 

A wide young forest spread away at their feet, to the right and to theleft. There was ice on the tiny oaks and miniature pines; it glitteredsharply under the moon; the light upon the snow was blue; cold roadswound away through it, deserted; little piles of dead leaves shivered; afine keen spray ran along the tops of the drifts; inky shadows lurkedand dodged about the undergrowth; in the broad spaces the snow glared;the lighted mills, a zone of fire, blazed from east to west; the skieswere bare, and the wind was up, and Merrimack in the distance chantedsolemnly. 

"Dick, " said Asenath, "this is a dreadful place! Take me home. "

But when he would have turned, she held him back with a sudden cry, andstood still. 

"I meant to tell you--I meant to say--Dick! I was going to say--"

But she did not say it. She opened her lips to speak once and again, butno sound came from them. 

"Sene! why, Sene, what ails you?"

He turned, and took her in his arms. 

"Poor Sene!"

He kissed her, feeling sorry for her unknown trouble. He wondered whyshe sobbed. He kissed her again. She broke from him, and away with agreat bound upon the snow. 

"You make it so hard! You've no right to make it so hard! It ain't as ifyou loved me, Dick! I know I'm not like other girls! Go home and let mebe!"

But Dick drew her arm through his, and led her gravely away. "I like youwell enough, Asenath, " he said, with that motherly pity in his eyes;"I've always liked you. So don't let us have any more of this. "

So Asenath said nothing more. 

The sleek black river beckoned to her across the snow as they went home. A thought came to her as she passed the bridge, --it is a curious studywhat wicked thoughts will come to good people!--she found herselfconsidering the advisability of leaping the low brown parapet; and if itwould not be like Dick to go over after her; if there would be a chancefor them, even should he swim from the banks; how soon the icy currentwould paralyze him; how sweet it would be to chill to death there in hisarms; how all this wavering and pain would be over; how Del would lookwhen they dragged them out down below the machine-shop!

"Sene, are you cold?" asked puzzled Dick. She was warmly wrapped in herlittle squirrel furs; but he felt her quivering upon his arm, like onein an ague, all the way home. 

About eleven o'clock that night her father waked from an exciting dreamconcerning the best method of blacking patent-leather; Sene stood besidehis bed with her gray shawl thrown over her night-dress. 

"Father, suppose some time there should be only you and me--"

"Well, well, Sene, " said the old man sleepily, --"very well. "

"I'd try to be a good girl! Could you love me enough to make up?"

He told her indistinctly that she always was a good girl; she never hada whipping from the day her mother died. She turned away impatiently;then cried out and fell upon her knees. 

"Father, father! I'm in a great trouble. I haven't got any mother, anyfriend, anybody. Nobody helps me! Nobody knows. I've been thinking suchthings--O, such wicked things--up in my room! Then I got afraid ofmyself. You're good. You love me. I want you to put your hand on my headand say, 'God bless you, child, and show you how. '"

Bewildered, he put his hand upon her unbound hair, and said: "God blessyou, child, and show you how!"

Asenath looked at the old withered hand a moment, as it lay beside heron the bed, kissed it, and went away. 

There was a scarlet sunrise the next morning. A pale pink flush stolethrough a hole in the curtain, and fell across Asenath's sleeping face, and lay there like a crown. It woke her, and she threw on her dress, andsat down for a while on the window-sill, to watch the coming-on of theday. 

The silent city steeped and bathed itself in rose-tints; the river ranred, and the snow crimsoned on the distant New Hampshire hills;Pemberton, mute and cold, frowned across the disk of the climbing sun, and dripped, as she had seen it drip before, with blood. 

The day broke softly, the snow melted, the wind blew warm from theriver. The factory-bell chimed cheerily, and a few sleepers, in safe, luxurious beds, were wakened by hearing the girls sing on their way towork. 

Asenath came down with a quiet face. In her communing with the sunrisehelpful things had been spoken to her. Somehow, she knew not how, thepeace of the day was creeping into her heart. For some reason, she knewnot why, the torment and unrest of the night were gone. There was afuture to be settled, but she would not trouble herself about that justnow. There was breakfast to get; and the sun shone, and a snow-bird waschirping outside of the door. She noticed how the tea-kettle hummed, andhow well the new curtain, with the castle and waterfall on it, fittedthe window. She thought that she would scour the closet at night, andsurprise her father by finishing those list slippers; She kissed himwhen she had tied on the red hood, and said good-by to Dick, and toldthem just where to find the squash-pie for dinner. 

When she had closed the twisted gate, and taken a step or two upon thesnow, she came thoughtfully back. Her father was on his bench, mendingone of Meg Match's shoes. She pushed it gently out of his hands, satdown upon his lap, and stroked the shaggy hair away from his forehead. 

"Father!"

"Well, what now, Sene?--what now?"

"Sometimes I believe I've forgotten you a bit, you know. I think we'regoing to be happier after this. That's all. "

She went out singing, and he heard the gate shut again with a click. 

Sene was a little dizzy that morning, --the constant palpitation of thefloors always made her dizzy after a wakeful night, --and so her coloredcotton threads danced out of place, and troubled her. 

Del Ivory, working beside her, said, "How the mill shakes! What's goingon?"

"It's the new machinery they're h'isting in, " observed the overseer, carelessly. "Great improvement, but heavy, very heavy; they calc'late ongetting it all into place to-day; you'd better be tending to your frame, Miss Ivory. "

As the day wore on, the quiet of Asenath's morning deepened. Round andround with the pulleys over her head she wound her thoughts of Dick. Inand out with her black and dun-colored threads she spun her future. Pretty Del, just behind her, was twisting a pattern like a rainbow. Shenoticed this, and smiled. 

"Never mind!" she thought, "I guess God knows. "

Was He ready "to bless her, and show her how"? She wondered. If, indeed, it were best that she should never be Dick's wife, it seemed to her thatHe would help her about it. She had been a coward last night; her bloodleaped in her veins with shame at the memory of it. Did He understand?Did He not know how she loved Dick, and how hard it was to lose him?

However that might be, she began to feel at rest about herself. Acurious apathy about means and ways and decisions took possession ofher. A bounding sense that a way of escape was provided from all hertroubles, such as she had when her mother died, came upon her. 

Years before, an unknown workman in South Boston, casting an iron pillarupon its core, had suffered it to "float" a little, a very little more, till the thin, unequal side cooled to the measure of an eighth of aninch. That man had provided Asenath's way of escape. 

She went out at noon with her luncheon, and found a place upon thestairs, away from the rest, and sat there awhile, with her eyes upon theriver, thinking. She could not help wondering a little, after all, whyGod need to have made her so unlike the rest of his fair handiwork. Delcame bounding by, and nodded at her carelessly. Two young Irish girls, sisters, --the beauties of the mill, --magnificently coloredcreatures, --were singing a little love-song together, while they tied ontheir hats to go home. 

"There _are_ such pretty things in the world!" thought poor Sene. 

Did anybody speak to her after the girls were gone? Into her heart thesewords fell suddenly, "_He_ hath no form nor comeliness. _His_ visage wasso marred more than any man. "

They clung to her fancy all the afternoon. She liked the sound of them. She wove them in with her black and dun colored threads. 

The wind began at last to blow chilly up the stair-cases, and in at thecracks; the melted drifts out under the walls to harden; the sun dippedabove the dam; the mill dimmed slowly; shadows crept down between theframes. 

"It's time for lights, " said Meg Match, and swore a little at herspools. 

Sene, in the pauses of her thinking, heard snatches of the girls' talk. 

"Going to ask out to-morrow, Meg?"

"Guess so, yes; me and Bob Smith we thought we'd go to Boston, and comeup in the theatre train. "

"Del Ivory, I want the pattern of your zouave. "

"Did I go to church? No, you don't catch me! If I slave all the week, I'll do what I please on Sunday. "

"Hush-sh! There's the boss looking over here!"

"Kathleen Donnavon, be still with your ghost-stories. There's one thingin the world I never will hear about, and that's dead people. "

"Del, " said Sene, "I think to-morrow--"

She stopped. Something strange had happened to her frame; it jarred, buzzed, snapped; the threads untwisted and flew out of place. 

"Curious!" she said, and looked up. 

Looked up to see her overseer turn wildly, clap his hands to his head, and fall; to hear a shriek from Del that froze her blood; to see thesolid ceiling gape above her; to see the walls and windows stagger; tosee iron pillars reel, and vast machinery throw up its helpless, giantarms, and a tangle of human faces blanch and writhe!

She sprang as the floor sunk. As pillar after pillar gave way, shebounded up an inclined plane, with the gulf yawning after her. It gainedupon her, leaped at her, caught her; beyond were the stairs and an opendoor; she threw out her arms, and struggled on with hands and knees, tripped in the gearing, and saw, as she fell, a square, oaken beam aboveher yield and crash; it was of a fresh red color; she dimly wonderedwhy, --as she felt her hands-slip, her knees slide, support, time, place, and reason, go utterly out. 

"_At ten minutes before five, on Tuesday, the tenth of January, thePemberton Mill, all hands being at the time on duty, fell to theground_. "

So the record flashed over the telegraph wires, sprang into large typein the newspapers, passed from lip to lip, a nine days' wonder, gaveplace to the successful candidate, and the muttering South, and wasforgotten. 

Who shall say what it was to the seven hundred and fifty souls who wereburied in the ruins? What to the eighty-eight who died that death ofexquisite agony? What to the wrecks of men and women who endure untothis day a life that is worse than death? What to that architect andengineer who, when the fatal pillars were first delivered to them forinspection, had found one broken under their eyes, yet accepted thecontract, and built with them a mill whose thin walls and wide, unsupported stretches might have tottered over massive columns and onflawless ore?

One that we love may go upon battle-ground, and we are ready for theworst: we have said our good-bys; our hearts wait and pray: it is hislife, not his death, which is the surprise. But that he should go out tohis safe, daily, commonplace occupations, unnoticed anduncaressed, --scolded a little, perhaps, because he leaves the door open, and tells us how cross we are this morning; and they bring him up thesteps by and by, a mangled mass of death and horror, --that is hard. 

Old Martyn, working at Meg Match's shoes, --she was never to wear thoseshoes, poor Meg!--heard, at ten minutes before five, what he thought tobe the rumble of an earthquake under his very feet, and stood with batedbreath, waiting for the crash. As nothing further appeared to happen, hetook his stick and limped out into the street. 

A vast crowd surged through it from end to end. Women with white lipswere counting the mills, --Pacific, Atlantic, Washington, --Pemberton?Where was Pemberton?

Where Pemberton had winked its many eyes last night, and hummed with itsiron lips this noon, a cloud of dust, black, silent, horrible, puffed ahundred feet into the air. 

Asenath opened her eyes after a time. Beautiful green and purple lightshad been dancing about her, but she had had no thoughts. It occurred toher now that she must have been struck upon the head. The church-clockswere striking eight. A bonfire which had been built at, a distance, tolight the citizens in the work of rescue, cast a little gleam in throughthe _débris_ across her two hands, which lay clasped together at herside. One of her fingers, she saw, was gone; it was the finger whichheld Dick's little engagement ring. The red beam lay across herforehead, and drops dripped from it upon her eyes. Her feet, stilltangled in the gearing which had tripped her, were buried beneath a pileof bricks. 

A broad piece of flooring, that had fallen slantwise, roofed her in, andsaved her from the mass of iron-work overhead, which would have crushedthe breath out of Titans. Fragments of looms, shafts, and pillars werein heaps about. Some one whom she could not see was dying just behindher. A little girl who worked in her room--a mere child--was crying, between her groans, for her mother. Del Ivory sat in a little openspace, cushioned about with reels of cotton; she had a shallow gash uponher cheek; she was wringing her hands. They were at work from theoutside, sawing entrances through the labyrinth of planks. A dead womanlay close by, and Sene saw them draw her out. It was Meg Match. One ofthe pretty Irish girls was crushed quite out of sight; only one hand wasfree; she moved it feebly. They could hear her calling for JimmyMahoney, Jimmy Mahoney! and would they be sure and give him back thehandkerchief? Poor Jimmy Mahoney! By and by she called no more; and in alittle while the hand was still. On the other side of the slantedflooring some one prayed aloud. She had a little baby at home. She wasasking God to take care of it for her. "For Christ's sake, " she said. Sene listened long for the Amen, but it was never spoken. Beyond, theydug a man out from under a dead body, unhurt. He crawled to his feet, and broke into furious blasphemies. 

As consciousness came fully, agony grew. Sene shut her lips and foldedher bleeding hands together, and uttered no cry. Del did screamingenough for two, she thought. She pondered things, calmly as the nightdeepened, and the words that the workers outside were saying camebrokenly to her. Her hurt, she knew, was not unto death; but it must becared for before very long; how far could she support this slow bleedingaway? And what were the chances that they could hew their way to herwithout crushing her?

She thought of her father, of Dick; of the bright little kitchen andsupper-table set for three; of the song that she had sung in the flushof the morning. Life--even her life--grew sweet, now that it wasslipping from her. 

Del cried presently, that they were cutting them out. The glare of thebonfires struck through an opening; saws and axes flashed; voices grewdistinct. 

"They never can get at me, " said Sene. "I must be able to crawl. If youcould get some of those bricks off of my feet, Del!"

Del took off two or three in a frightened way; then, seeing the blood onthem, sat down and cried. 

A Scotch girl, with one arm shattered, crept up and removed the pile, then fainted. 

The opening broadened, brightened; the sweet night-wind blew in; thesafe night-sky shone through. Sene's heart leaped within her. Out in thewind and under the sky she should stand again, after all! Back in thelittle kitchen, where the sun shone, and she could sing a song, therewould yet be a place for her. She worked her head from under the beam, and raised herself upon her elbow. 

At that moment she heard a cry:

"Fire! _fire!_ GOD ALMIGHTY HELP THEM, --THE RUINS ARE ON FIRE!"

A man working over the _débris_ from the outside had taken thenotion--it being rather dark just there--to carry a lantern with him. 

"For God's sake, " a voice cried from the crowd, "don't stay there withthat light!"

But before the words had died upon the air, it was the dreadful fate ofthe man with the lantern to let it fall, --and it broke upon the ruinedmass. 

That was at nine o'clock. What there was to see from then till morningcould never be told or forgotten. 

A network twenty feet high, of rods and girders, of beams, pillars, stairways, gearing, roofing, ceiling, walling; wrecks of looms, shafts, twisters, pulleys, bobbins, mules, locked and interwoven; wrecks ofhuman creatures wedged in; a face that you know turned up at you fromsome pit which twenty-four hours' hewing could not open; a voice thatyou know crying after you from God knows where; a mass of long, fairhair visible here, a foot there, three fingers of a hand over there; thesnow bright-red under foot; charred limbs and headless trunks tossedabout; strong men carrying covered things by you, at sight of whichother strong men have fainted; the little yellow jet that flared up, anddied in smoke, and flared again, leaped out, licked the cotton-bales, tasted the oiled machinery, crunched the netted wood, danced on theheaped-up stone, threw its cruel arms high into the night, roared forjoy at helpless firemen, and swallowed wreck, death, and life togetherout of your sight, --the lurid thing stands alone in the gallery oftragedy. 

"Del, " said Sene, presently, "I smell the smoke. " And in a little while, "How red it is growing away over there at the left!"

To lie here and watch the hideous redness crawling after her, springingat her!--it had seemed greater than reason could bear, at first. 

Now it did not trouble her. She grew a little faint, and her thoughtswandered. She put her head down upon her arm, and shut her eyes. Dreamily she heard them saying a dreadful thing outside, about one ofthe overseers; at the alarm of fire he had cut his throat, and beforethe flames touched him he was taken out. Dreamily she heard Del cry thatthe shaft behind the heap of reels was growing hot. Dreamily she saw atiny puff of smoke struggle through the cracks of a broken fly-frame. 

They were working to save her, with rigid, stern faces. A planksnapped, a rod yielded; they drew out the Scotch girl; her hair wassinged; then a man with blood upon his face and wrists held down hisarms. 

"There's time for one more! God save the rest of ye, --I can't!"

Del sprang; then stopped, --even Del, --stopped ashamed, and looked backat the cripple. 

Asenath at this sat up erect. The latent heroism in her awoke. All herthoughts grew clear and bright. The tangled skein of her perplexed andtroubled winter unwound suddenly. This, then, was the way. It was betterso. God had provided himself a lamb for the burnt-offering. 

So she said, "Go, Del, and tell him I sent you with my dear love, andthat it's all right. "

And Del at the first word went. 

Sene sat and watched them draw her out; it was a slow process; the loosesleeve of her factory sack was scorched. 

Somebody at work outside turned suddenly and caught her. It was Dick. The love which he had fought so long broke free of barrier in that hour. He kissed her pink arm where the burnt sleeve fell off. He uttered a cryat the blood upon her face. She turned faint with the sense of safety;and, with a face as white as her own, he bore her away in his arms tothe hospital, over the crimson snow. 

Asenath looked out through the glare and smoke with parched lips. For ascratch upon the girl's smooth cheek, he had quite forgotten her. Theyhad left her, tombed alive here in this furnace, and gone their happyway. Yet it gave her a curious sense of relief and triumph. If this wereall that she could be to him, the thing which she had done was right, quite right. God must have known. She turned away, and shut her eyesagain. 

When she opened them, neither Dick, nor Del, nor crimsoned snow, norsky, were there; only the smoke writhing up a pillar of blood-red flame. 

The child who had called for her mother began to sob out that she wasafraid to die alone. 

"Come here, Molly, " said Sene. "Can you crawl around?"

Molly crawled around. 

"Put your head in my lap, and your arms about my waist, and I will putmy hands in yours, --so. There! I guess that's better. "

But they had not given them up yet. In the still unburnt rubbish at theright, some one had wrenched an opening within a foot of Sene's face. They clawed at the solid iron pintless like savage things. A firemanfainted in the glow. 

"Give it up!" cried the crowd from behind. "It can't be done! Fallback!"--then hushed, awestruck. 

An old man was crawling along upon his hands and knees over the heatedbricks. He was a very old man. His gray hair blew about in the wind. 

"I want my little gal!" he said. "Can't anybody tell me where to find mylittle gal?"

A rough-looking young fellow pointed in perfect silence through thesmoke. 

"I'll have her out yet. I'm an old man, but I can help. She's my littlegal, ye see. Hand me that there dipper of water; it'll keep her fromchoking, may be. Now! Keep cheery, Sene! Your old father'll get ye out. Keep up good heart, child! That's it!"

"It's no use, father. Don't feel bad, father. I don't mind it verymuch. "

He hacked at the timber; he tried to laugh; he bewildered himself withcheerful words. 

"No more ye needn't, Senath, for it'll be over in a minute. Don't bedowncast yet! We'll have ye safe at home before ye know it. Drink alittle more water, --do now! They'll get at ye now, sure!"

But above the crackle and the roar a woman's voice rang out like abell:--

"We're going home, to die no more. "

A child's notes quavered in the chorus. From sealed and unseen graves, white young lips swelled the glad refrain, --

"We're going, going home. "

The crawling smoke turned yellow, turned red. Voice after voice brokeand hushed utterly. One only sang on like silver. It flung defiance downat death. It chimed into the lurid sky without a tremor. For one stoodbeside her in the furnace, and his form was like unto the form of theSon of God. Their eyes met. Why should not Asenath sing?

"Senath!" cried the old man out upon the burning bricks; he was scorchednow, from his gray hair to his patched boots. 

The answer came triumphantly, --

 "To die no more, no more, no more!"

"Sene! little Sene!"

But some one pulled him back. 

Night-Watches. 

Keturah wishes to state primarily that she is good-natured. She thinksit necessary to make this statement, lest, after having heard her story, you should, however polite you might be about it, in your heart ofhearts suspect her capable not only of allowing her angry passions torise, but of permitting them to boil over "in tempestuous fury wild andunrestrained. " If it were an orthodox remark, she would also add, fromlike motives of self-defence, that she is not in the habit of swearing. 

Are you accustomed, O tender-hearted reader, to spend your nights, as ahabit, with your eyes open or shut? On the answer to this questiondepends her sole hope of appreciation and sympathy. 

She begs you will understand that she does not mean you, the be-ribbonedand be-spangled and be-rouged frequenter of ball and _soirée_, with yourwell-taught, drooping lashes, or wide girl's eyes untamed and wondering, your flushing color, and your pulse up to a hundred. You are very prettyfor your pains, --O, to be sure you are very pretty! She has not theheart to scold you, though you are dancing and singing and flirtingaway your golden nights, your restful, young nights, that never come butonce, --though you are dancing and singing and flirting yourselvesmerrily into your grave. She would like to put in a plea before theeloquence of which Cicero and Demosthenes, Beecher and Sumner, shouldpale like wax-lights before the sun, for the new fashion said to beobtaining in New York, that the _soirée_ shall give place to the_matinée_, at which the guests shall assemble at four o'clock in theafternoon, and are expected to go home at seven or eight. That would benot only civilized, it would be millennial. 

But Keturah is perfectly aware that you will do as you will. If theexcitement of the "wee sma' hours ayont the twal" prove preferable to aquiet evening at home, and a good, Christian, healthy sleep after it, why the "sma' hours" it will be. If you will do it, it is "none of herfunerals, " as the small boy remarked. Only she particularly requests younot to insult her by offering her your sympathy. Wait till you know whatforty-eight mortal, wide-awake, staring, whirring, unutterable hoursmean. 

Listen to her mournful tale; and, while you listen, let your head becomefountains of water, and your eyes rivers of tears for her, and for allwho are doomed to reside in her immediate vicinity. 

"Tired nature's sweet restorer, " as the newspapers, in a sudden andsevere poetical attack, remarked of Jeff Davis, "refuses to bless"Keturah, except as her own sweet will inclines her. They have acontinuous lover's quarrel, exceedingly bitter while it rages, exceedingly sweet when it is made up. Keturah attends a perfectly graveand unimpeachable lecture, --the Restorer pouts and goes off in a hufffor twenty-four hours. Keturah undertakes at seven o'clock a concert, --announced as Mendelssohn Quintette, proving to be Gilmore'sBrassiest, --and nothing hears she of My Lady till two o'clock, A. M. Keturah spends an hour at a prayer-meeting, on a pine bench that mayhave heard of cushions, but certainly has never seen one face to face;and comes home at eight o'clock to the pleasing discovery that the fairenslaver has taken some doctrinal offence, and vanished utterly. 

Though lost to sight she's still to memory dear, and Keturah penitentlybetakes herself to the seeking of her in those ingenious ways which shehas learned at the school of a melancholy experience. A table and akerosene lamp are brought into requisition; also a book. If it isn't theDictionary, it is Cruden's Concordance. If these prove too exciting, itis Edwards on the Will. Light reading is strictly forbidden. Congressional Reports are sometimes efficacious, as well as Martin F. Tupper, and somebody's "Sphere of Woman. "

There is one single possibility out of ten that this treatment willproduce drowsiness. There are nine probabilities to the contrary. Thepossibility is worth trying for, and trying hard for; but if it resultsin the sudden flight of President Edwards across the room, a severebanging of the "Sphere of Woman" against the wall, and the totaldisappearance of Cruden's Concordance beneath the bed, Keturah is not inthe least surprised. It is altogether too familiar a result to elicitremark. It simply occasions a fresh growth to a horrible resolution thatshe has been slowly forming for years. 

Some day _she_ will write a book. The publishers shall nap over it, andaccept it with pleasure. The drowsy printers shall set up its type withtheir usual unerring exactness. The proof-readers shall correct it intheir dreams. Customers in the bookstores shall nod at the sight of itsbinding. Its readers shall dose at its Preface. Sleepless old age, sharpand unrelieved pain, youth sorrowful before the time, shall seek it out, shall flock unto the counters of its fortunate publishers (she has threefirms in her mind's eye; one in Boston, one in New York, and one inPhiladelphia; but who the happy men are to be is not yet definitelydecided), who shall waste their inheritance in distributing itthroughout the length and breadth of a grateful continent. Physiciansfrom everywhere under the sun, who have proved the fickleness ofhyoscyamus, of hops, of Dover's powders, of opium, of morphine, oflaudanum, of hidden virtues of herbs of the field, and minerals from therock, and gases from the air; who know the secrets of all the pityingearth, and, behold, it is vanity of vanities, shall line theirhospitals, cram their offices, stuff their bottles, with the newuniversal panacea and blessing to suffering humanity. 

And Keturah _can_ keep a resolution. 

Her literary occupation disposed of, in the summary manner referred to, she runs through the roll of her reserve force, and their name isLegion. She composes herself, in an attitude of rest, with ahandkerchief tied over her eyes to keep them shut, blows her lamp outinstead of screwing it out, strangles awhile in the gas, and begins torepeat her alphabet, which, owing to like stern necessity, she hasfortunately never forgotten. She says it forward; she says it backward;she begins at the middle and goes up; she begins at the middle and goesdown; she rattles it through in French, she groans it through in German, she falters it through in Greek. She attempts the numeration-table, flounders somewhere in the quadrillions, and forgets where she left off. She watches an interminable flock of sheep jump over a wall till herhead spins. There always seem to be so many more where the last one camefrom. She listens to oar-beats, and drum-beats, and heart-beats. Sheimprovises sonatas and gallopades, oratorios and mazourkas. Sheperpetrates the title and first line of an epic poem, goes through thealphabet for a rhyme, and none appearing, she repeats the first line byway of encouragement. But all in vain. 

With a silence that speaks unspeakable things, she rises solemnly, andseeks the pantry in darkness that may be felt. At the bottom of thestairs she steps with her whole weight flat upon something that squirms, and is warm, and turns over, and utters a cry that makes night hideous. O, nothing but the cat, that is all! The pantry proves to be wellstocked with bread, but not another mortal thing. Now, if there isanything Keturah _particularly_ dislikes, it is dry bread. Accordingly, with a remark which is intended for Love's ear alone, she gropes her wayto the cellar door, which is unexpectedly open, pitches head-first intothe cavity, and makes the descent of half the stairs in an easy andgraceful manner, chiefly with her elbows. She reaches the ground afteran interval, steps splash into a pool of water, knocks over a mop, andembraces a tall cider barrel with her groping arms. After a littlewandering about among ash-bins and apple-bins, reservoirs and coal-heapsand cobwebs, she discovers the hanging-shelf which has been the _ignisfatuus_ of her search. Something extremely cold crossing her shoelessfeet at this crisis suggests pleasant fancies of a rat. Keturah isashamed to confess that she has never in all the days of the years ofher pilgrimage set eyes upon a rat. Depending solely upon herimagination, her conception of that animal is a cross between analligator and a jaguar. She stands her ground manfully, however, and ishappy to state that she did _not_ faint. 

In the agitation consequent upon this incident she butters her breadwith the lard, and takes an enormous bite on the way up stairs. Sheseeks no more refreshment that night. 

One resort alone is left. With a despairing sigh she turns the greatfaucet of the bath-tub and holds her head under it till she is upon theverge of a watery grave. This experiment is her forlorn hope. Perhapsabout three or four o'clock she falls into a series of jerky naps, anddreams that she is editor of a popular Hebrew magazine, wanderingfrantically through a warehouse full of aspirant MSS. (chiefly from thejunior classes of theological seminaries) of which she cannot translatea letter. 

Of the tenth of Keturah's unearthly experiences, --of the number of timesshe has been taken for a robber, and chased by the entire roused andbewildered family, with loaded guns; of the pans of milk she has upset, the crockery whose hopes she has untimely shattered, the skulls she hascracked against open doors, the rocking-chairs she has stumbled over andapostrophized in her own meek way; of the neighbors she has frightenedout of town by her perambulations; of the alarms of fire she has raised, pacing the wood-shed with a lantern for exercise stormy nights; of allthe possible and impossible corners and crevices in which she has soughtrepose, (she has slept on every sofa in every room in the house, andonce she spent a whole night on a closet shelf); of the amiablecondition of her mornings, and the terror she is fast becoming tofamily. Church, and State, the time would fail her to tell. Were she to"let slip the dogs of war, " and relate a modicum of the agonies sheundergoes, --how the stamping of a neighbor's horse on a barn floor willdrive every solitary wink of sleep from her eyes and slumber from hereyelids; the nibbling of a mouse in some un-get-at-able place in thewall prove torture; the rattling of a pane of glass, ticking of a clock, or pattering of rain-drops, as effective as a cannon; a guest in the"spare room" with a musical "love of a baby, " something far differentfrom a blessing, and a tolerably windy night, one lengthened vigil longdrawn out, --the liberal public would cry, "Forbear!" It becomes reallyan interesting science to learn how slight a thing will utterly deprivean unfortunate creature of the great necessity of life; but this articlenot being a scientific treatise, that must be left to the sympathizingimagination. 

Keturah feels compelled, however, to relate the story of two memorablenights, of which the only wonder is that she has lived to tell the tale. 

Every incident is stamped indelibly upon her brain. It is wrought inletters of fire. "While memory holds a seat in this distracted globe, "it shall not, cannot be forgotten. 

It was a night in June, --sultry, gasping, fearful. Keturah went to herown room, as is her custom, at the Puritanic hour of nine. Sleep, for acouple of hours, being out of the question, she threw wide her doorsand windows, and betook herself to her writing-desk. A story for amagazine, which it was imperative should be finished to-morrow, appealedto her already partially stupefied brain. She forced her unwilling peninto the service, whisked the table round into the draught, and began. In about five minutes the sibyl caught the inspiration of her god, andheat and sleeplessness were alike forgotten. This sounds very poetic, but it wasn't at all. Keturah regrets to say that she had on a veryunbecoming green wrapper, and several ink-spots on her fingers. 

It was a very thrilling and original story, and it came, as allthrilling and original stories must come, to a crisis. Seraphina foundTheodore kissing the hand of Celeste in the woods. Keturah becameexcited. 

"'O Theodore!' whispered the unhappy maiden to the moaning trees. 'OTheodore, my--'"

Whir! buzz! swosh! came something through the window into the lamp, anddown squirming into the ink-bottle. Keturah jumped. If you have half thehorror of those great June beetles that she has, you will know how shejumped. She emptied the entire contents of the ink-bottle out of thewindow, closed her blinds, and began again. 

"'Theodore, ' said Seraphina. 

"'Seraphina, ' said Theodore. " Jump the second! There he was, --notTheodore, but the beetle, --whirring round the lamp, and buzzing downinto her lap. Hadn't he been burned in the light, drowned in the ink, speared with the pen, and crushed by falling from the window? Yet therehe was, or the ghost of him, fluttering his inky wings into her veryeyes, and walking leisurely across the smooth, fair page that waited tobe inscribed with Seraphina's woe. Nerved by despair, Keturah did ahorrible thing. Never before or since has she been known to accomplishit. She put him down on the floor and stepped on him. She repented ofthe act in dust and ashes. Before she could get across the room to closethe window ten more had come to his funeral. To describe the horrors ofthe ensuing hour she has no words. She put them out of the window, --theycame directly back. She drowned them in the wash-bowl, --they fluttered, and sputtered, and buzzed up into the air. She killed them incorners, --they came to life under her very eyes. She caught them in herhandkerchief and tied them up tight, --they crawled out before she couldget them in. She shut the cover of the wash-stand down on them, --shelooked in awhile after and there was not one to be seen. All ten of thegreat blundering creatures were knocking their brains out against theceiling. After the endurance of terrors that came very near turning herhair gray, she had pushed the last one out on the balcony, shut thewindow, and was gasping away in the airless room, her first momentarysense of security, when there struck upon her agonized ear a fiendishbuzzing, and three of them came whirling back through a crack about aslarge as a knitting-needle. No _mortal_ beetle could have come throughit. Keturah turned pale and let them alone. 

The clock was striking eleven when quiet was at last restored, and theexhausted sufferer began to think of sleep. At this moment she heard asound before which her heart sank like lead. You must know that Keturahhas a very near neighbor, Miss Humdrum by name. Miss Humdrum is a--well, a very excellent and pious old lady, who keeps a one-eyed servant andthree cats; and the sound which Keturah heard was Miss Humdrum's cats. 

Keturah descended to the wood-shed, armed herself with a huge oaken log, and sallied out into the garden, with a horrible _sang-froid_ that onlylong familiarity with her errand could have engendered. It was Egyptiandarkness; but her practised eye discerned, or thought it discerned, awhite cat upon the top of the high wooden fence. Keturah smiled aghastly smile, and fired. Now she never yet in her life threw anythinganywhere, under any circumstances, that did not go exactly in theopposite direction from what she wanted to have it. This occasion provedno exception. The cat jumped, and sprang over, and disappeared. Thestick went exactly into the middle of the fence. Keturah cannot supposethat the last trump will be capable of making a louder noise. She stoodtransfixed. One cry alone broke the hideous silence. 

"_O_ Lord!" in an unmistakably Irish, half-wakened howl, from the openwindow of the one-eyed servant's room. "Only that, and nothing more. "

Keturah returned to her apartment, a sadder if not a wiser woman. Mariusamong the ruins of Carthage, Napoleon at St. Helena, M'Clellan inEurope, have henceforth and forever her sympathy. 

She thinks it was _precisely_ five minutes after her return, duringwhich the happy stillness that seemed to rest upon nature without andnature within had whispered faint promises of coming rest, that theresuddenly broke upon it a hoarse, deep, unearthly breathing. So hoarse, so deep, so unearthly, and so directly underneath her window, that forabout ten seconds Keturah sat paralyzed. There was but one thing itcould be. A travelling menagerie in town had lost its Polish wolf thatvery day. This was the Polish wolf. 

The horrible panting, like the panting of a famished creature, camenearer, grew louder, grew hoarser. The animal had found a bone in thegrass, and was crunching it in his ghastly way. Then she could hear himsniffing at the door. 

And Amram's room was on the lower story! Perhaps wolves climbed in atwindows!

The awful thought roused Keturah from the stupor of her terror. She wasno coward. She would face the fearful sight. She would call and warn himat any risk. She faltered out upon the balcony. She leaned over therailing. She gazed breathlessly down into the darkness. 

A cow. 

Another cow. 

Three cows. 

Keturah sat down on the window-sill in the calm of despair. 

It was succeeded by a storm. She concludes that she was about fiveseconds on the passage from her room to the garden. With "hair flotant, and arms disclosed, " like the harpies of heraldic device, she rushed upto the invaders--and stopped. Exactly what was to be done? Three greatstupid, browsing, contented cows _versus_ one lone, lorn woman. Forabout one minute Keturah would not have wagered her fortune on thewoman. But it is not her custom to "say die, " and after some reflectionshe ventured on a manful command. 

"Go away! Go! go!" The stentorian remark caused a result for which shewas, to say the least, unprepared. The creatures coolly turned about andwalked directly up to her. To be sure. Why not? Is it not a part of ouroutrageous Yankee nomenclature to teach cows to come to you when youtell them to go away? How Keturah, country born and bred, could haveeven momentarily forgotten so clear and simple a principle of philology, remains a mystery to this day. A little reflection convinced her of theonly logical way of ridding herself of her guests. Accordingly, shewalked a little way behind them and tried again. 

"Come here, sir! Come, good fellow! Wh-e-e! come here!"

Three great wooden heads lifted themselves slowly, and three pairs ofsoft, sleepy eyes looked at her, and the beasts returned to their cloverand stood stock-still. 

What was to be done? You could go behind and push them. Or you could goin front and pull them by the horns. 

Neither of these methods exactly striking Keturah's fancy, she took up alittle chip and threw at them; also a piece of coal and a handful ofpebbles. These gigantic efforts proving to be fruitless, she sat down onthe grass and looked at them. The heartless creatures resisted even thatappeal. 

At this crisis of her woes one of Keturah's many brilliant thoughts cameto her relief. She hastened upon the wings of the wind to her infallibleresort, the wood-shed, and filled her arms up to the chin with pineknots. Thus equipped, she started afresh to the conflict. It is recordedthat out of twenty of those sticks, thrown with savage and direfulintent, only one hit. It is, however, recorded that the enemy dispersed, after being valiantly pursued around the house, out of the front gate(where one stuck, and got through with the greatest difficulty), and fora quarter of a mile down the street. In the course of the rout Keturahtripped on her dress only six times, and fell flat but four. Onepleasing little incident gave delightful variety to the scene. Aparticularly frisky and clover-loving white cow, whose heart yearnedafter the apples of Sodom, turned about in the road without any warningwhatever and showed fight. Keturah adopted a sudden resolution to returnhome "across lots, " and climbed the nearest stone-wall with considerable_empressement_. Exactly half-way over she was surprised to find herselfgasping among the low-hanging boughs of a butternut-tree, where she hunglike Absalom of old, between heaven and earth. She would like to state, in this connection, that she always had too much vanity to wear awaterfall; so she still retains a portion of her original hair. 

However, she returned victorious over the silent dew-laden fields anddown into the garden paths, where she paced for two hours back and forthamong the aromatic perfumes of the great yellow June lilies. There mighthave been a bit of poetry in it under other circumstances, but Keturahwas not poetically inclined on that occasion. The events of the nighthad so roused her soul within her, that exercise unto exhaustion was hersole remaining hope of sleep. 

At about two o'clock she crawled faintly upstairs again, and had justfallen asleep with her head on the window-sill, when a wandering dog hadto come directly under the window, and sit there and bark for half anhour at a rake-handle. 

Keturah made no other effort to fight her destiny. Determined to meetit heroically, she put a chair precisely into the middle of the room, and sat up straight in it, till she heard the birds sing. Somewhereabout that epoch she fell into a doze with one eye open, when a terrificpeal of thunder started her to her feet. It was Patsy knocking at thedoor to announce that her breakfast was cold. 

In the ghastly condition of the following day the story was finished andsent off. It was on this occasion that the patient and long-enduringeditor ventured mildly to suggest, that when, by a thrilling andhorrible mischance, Seraphina's lovely hand came between a log of woodand the full force of Theodore's hatchet, the result _might_ have beenmore disastrous than the loss of a finger-nail. Alas! even his editorialomniscience did not know--how could it?--the story of that night. Keturah forgave him. 

It is perhaps worthy of mention that Miss Humdrum appeared promptly ateight o'clock the next morning, with her handkerchief at her eyes. 

"My Star-spangled Banner has met with her decease, Ketury. "

"Indeed! How very sad!"

"Yes. She has met with her decease. Under _very_ peculiar circumstances, Ketury. "

"Oh!" said Ketury, hunting for her own handkerchief; finding three inher pocket, she brought them all into requisition. 

"And I feel it my duty to inquire, " said Miss Humdrum, "whether it mayhappen that _you_ know anything about the event, Ketury. "

"I?" said Keturah, weeping, "I didn't know she was dead even! Dear MissHumdrum, you are indeed afflicted. "

"But I feel compelled to say, " pursued Miss Humdrum, eying this wretchedhypocrite severely, "that my girl Jemimy _did_ hear somebody fire a gunor a cannon or something out in your garden last night, and she scar'tout of her wits, and my poor cat found cold under the hogshead thismorning, Ketury. "

"Miss Humdrum, " said Keturah, "I cannot, in justice to myself, answersuch insinuations, further than to say that Amram _never_ allows the gunto go out of his own room. The cannon we keep in the cellar. "

"Oh!" said Miss Humdrum, with horrible suspicion in her eyes. "Well, Ihope you haven't it on your conscience, I'm sure. _Good_ morning. "

It had been the ambition of Keturah's life to see a burglar. The secondof the memorable nights referred to crowned this ambition by not onlyone burglar, but two. She it was who discovered them, she who frightenedthem away, and nobody but she ever saw them. She confesses to a naturaland unconquerable pride in them. It came about on this wise:--

It was one of Keturah's wide-awake nights, and she had been wanderingoff into the fields at the foot of the garden, where it was safe andstill. There is, by the way, a peculiar awe in the utter hush of theearliest morning hours, of which no one can know who has notfamiliarized himself with it in all its moods. A solitary walk in asolitary place, with the great world sleeping about you, and the greatskies throbbing above you, and the long unrest of the panting summernight, fading into the cool of dews, and pure gray dawns, has in itsomething of what Mr. Robertson calls "God's silence. "

Once, on one of these lonely rambles, Keturah found away in the fields, under the shadow of an old stone-wall, a baby's grave. It had noheadstone to tell its story, and the weeds and brambles of many yearshad overgrown it. Keturah is not of a romantic disposition, especiallyon her midnight tramps, but she sat down by the little nameless thing, and looked from it to the arch of eternal stars that, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, kept steadfast watch over it, and was very still. 

It is one of the standing grievances of her life that Amram, while nevertaking the trouble to go and look, insists upon it that was nothing butsomebody's pet dog. She knows better. 

On this particular night, Keturah, in coming up from the garden toreturn to the house, had a dim impression that something crossed thewalk in front of her and disappeared among the rustling trees. Theimpression was sufficiently strong to keep her sitting up for half anhour at her window, under the feeling that an ounce of prevention wasworth a pound of cure. She has indeed been asked why she did notreconnoitre the rustling trees upon the spot. She considers that wouldhave been an exceedingly poor stroke of policy, and of an impoliticthing Keturah is not capable. She sees far and plans deep. Supposing shehad gone and been shot through the head, where would have been the funof her burglars? To yield a life-long aspiration at the very moment thatit is within grasp, was too much to ask even of Keturah. 

Words cannot describe the sensations of the moment, when that half-hourwas rewarded by the sight of two stealthy, cat-like figures, creepingout from among the trees. A tall man and a little man, and both withvery unbanditti-like straw-hats on. 

Now, if Keturah has a horror in this world, it is that delicate play ofthe emotions commonly known as "woman's nonsense. " And therefore did shesit still for three mortal minutes, with her burglars making tracks forthe kitchen window under her very eyes, in order to prove to herself andan incredulous public, beyond all shadow of doubt or suspicion, thatthey were robbers and not dreams; actual flesh and blood, notnightmares; unmistakable hats and coats in a place where hats and coatsought not to be, not clothes-lines and pumps. She tried hard to makeAmram and the Paterfamilias out of them. Who knew but they also, by someunheard-of revolution in all the laws of nature, were on an exploringexpedition after truant sleep? She struggled manfully after theconviction that they were innocent and unimpeachable neighbors, cuttingthe short way home across the fields from some remarkably lateprayer-meeting. She agonized after the belief that they were two ofPatsy's sweethearts, come for the commendable purpose of serenading her. 

In fact they were almost in the house before this remarkable female wasprepared to trust the evidence of her own senses. 

But when suspense gloomed into certainty, Keturah is happy to say thatshe was grandly equal to the occasion. She slammed open her blinds withan emphasis, and lighted her lamp with a burnt match. 

The men jumped, and dodged, and ran, and hid behind the trees, in themost approved manner of burglars, who flee when no woman pursueth; andKeturah, being of far too generous a disposition to enjoy the pleasureof their capture unshared, lost no time in hammering at Amram's door. 

"Amram!"

No answer. 

"_Am_ram!"

Silence. 

"Am-_ram!_"

"Oh! Ugh! Who--"

Silence again. 

"Amram, wake up! Come out here--quick!"

"O-o-oh, yes. Who's there?"

"I. "

"I?"

"Keturah. "

"Kefurah?"

"Amram, be quick, or we shall all have our throats cut! There are somemen in the garden. "

"Hey?"

"_Men_ in the garden!"

"Men?"

"In the _garden!_"

"Garden?"

Keturah can bear a great deal, but there comes a limit even to herproverbial patience. She burst open the door without ceremony, and isunder the impression that Amram received a shaking such as even histender youth was a stranger to. It effectually woke him toconsciousness, as well as to the gasping and particularly senselessremark, "What on earth was she wringing his neck for?" As if he mightn'thave known! She has the satisfaction of remembering that he was asked inreturn, "Did he expect a solitary unprotected female to keep all hismurderers away from him, as well as those wolves she drove off the othernight?"

However, there was no time to be wasted in tender words, and before awoman could have winked, Amram made his appearance dressed and armed andsarcastically incredulous. Keturah grasped the pistol, and followed himat a respectful distance. Stay in the house and hold the light? Catchher! She would take the light with her, and the house too, if necessary, but she would be in at the death. 

She wishes Mr. Darley were on hand, to immortalize the picture theymade, scouring the premises after those disobliging burglars, --especiallyKeturah, in the green wrapper, with her hair rolled all up in a huge knobon top of her head, to keep it out of the way, and her pistol held out atarm's-length, pointed falteringly, directly at the stars. She will informthe reader confidentially--tell it not in Gath--of a humiliating discoveryshe made exactly four weeks afterward, and which she has never beforeimparted to a human creature, --it wasn't loaded. 

Well, they peered behind every door, they glared into every shadow, theysqueezed into every crack, they dashed into every corner, they listenedat every cranny and crevice, step and turn. But not a burglar! Of coursenot. A regiment might have run away while Amram was waking up. 

Keturah thinks it will hardly be credited that this hopeful person daredto suggest and dares to maintain that it was _Cats_!

But she must draw the story of her afflictions to a close. And lest her"solid" reader's eyes reject the rambling recital as utterly unworthythe honor of their notice, she is tempted to whittle it down to a moralbefore saying farewell. For you must know that Keturah has learnedseveral things from her mournful experience. 

1. That every individual of her acquaintance, male and female, aged andyouthful, orthodox and heretical, who sleeps regularly nine hours out ofthe twenty-four, has his or her own especial specimen recipe of a"perfectly harmless anodyne" to offer, with advice thrown in. 

2. That nothing ever yet put her to sleep but a merciful Providence. 

3. A great respect for Job. 

4. That the notion commonly and conscientiously received by veryexcellent people, that wakeful nights can and should be spent in prayer, religious meditation, and general spiritual growth, is all they knowabout it. Hours of the extremest bodily and mental exhaustion, whenevery nerve is quivering as if laid bare, and the surface of the brainburning and whirling to agony, with the reins of control let loose onevery rebellious and every senseless thought, are not the times mostlikely to be chosen for the purest communion with God. To be sure. KingDavid "remembered Him upon his bed, and meditated upon Him in thenight-watches. " Keturah does not undertake to contradict Scripture, butshe has come to the conclusion that David was either a _very_ good man, or he didn't lie awake very often. 

But, over and above all, _haec fabula docet_:

5. That people who can sleep when they want to should keep Thanksgivingevery day in the year. 

The Day of My Death[1]

[Footnote 1: The characters in this narrative are fictitious. Theincidents the author does not profess to have witnessed. But they aregiven as related by eye-witnesses whose testimony would command averdict from any honest jury. The author, however, draws no conclusionsand suggests none. ]

Alison was sitting on a bandbox. She had generally been sitting on abandbox for three weeks, --or on a bushel-basket, or a cupboard shelf, ora pile of old newspapers, or the baby's bath-tub. On one occasion it wasthe baby himself. She mistook him for the rag-bag. 

If ever we had to move again, --which all the beneficence of the Penatesforbid!--my wife should be locked into the parlor, and a cargo ofIrishwomen turned loose about the premises to "attend to things. " Whatit is that women find to do with themselves in this world I have neveryet discovered. They are always "attending to things. " Whatever thatmay mean, I have long ago received it as the only solution at my commandof their superfluous wear and tear, and worry and flurry, and tears andnerves and headaches. A fellow may suggest Jane, and obtrude Bridget, and hire Peggy, and run in debt for Mehetable, and offer to take thebaby on 'Change with him, but has he by a feather's weight lightenedMadam's mysterious burden? My dear sir, don't presume to expect it. Shehas just as much to do as she ever had. In fact, she has a little more. "Strange, you don't appreciate it! Follow her about one day, and see foryourself!"

What I started to say, however, was that I thought it over often, --Imean about that invoice of Irishwomen, --coming home from the office atnight, while we were moving out of Artichoke Street into Nemo's Avenue. It is not pleasant to find one's wife always sitting on a bandbox. Ihave seen her crawl to her feet when she heard me coming, and hold on bya chair, and try her poor little best to look as if she could standtwenty-four hours longer; she so disliked that I should find a "used-uplooking house" under any circumstances. But I believe that was worsethan the bandbox. 

On this particular night she was too tired even to crawl. I found herall in a heap in the corner, two dusters and a wash-cloth in oneblue-veined hand, and a broom in the other; an old corn-colored silkhandkerchief knotted over her hair, --her hair is black, and the effectwas good, --and her little brown calico apron-string literally tied tothe baby, who was shrieking at the end of his tether because he couldjust not reach the kitten and throw her into the fire. On Alison's lap, between a pile of shirts and two piles of magazines, lay a freshlyopened letter. I noticed that she put it into her pocket before shedropped her dusters and stood up to lift her face for my kiss. Sheforgot about the apron-strings, and the baby tipped up the wrong way, and hung dangling in mid-air. 

After we had taken tea, --that is to say, after we had drawn around theironing-board put on two chairs in the front entry, made the cocoa in atin dipper, stirred it with a fork, and cut the bread with ajack-knife, --after the baby was fairly off to bed in a champagne-basket, and Tip disposed of, his mother only knew where, we coaxed a consumptivefire into the parlor grate, and sat down before it in the carpetless, pictureless, curtainless, blank, bare, soapy room. 

"Thank fortune, this is the last night of it!" I growled, putting mybooted feet against the wall, (my slippers had gone over to the avenuein a water-pail that morning, ) and tipping my chair back drearily, --mywife "_so_ objects" to the habit!

Allis made no reply, but sat looking thoughtfully, and with a slightlyperplexed and displeased air, into the sizzling wet wood that snappedand flared and smoked and hissed and blackened, and did everything butburn. 

"I really don't know what to do about it, " she broke silence at last. 

"I'm inclined to think there's nothing better to do than to look at it. "

"No; not the fire. O, I forgot--I haven't shown it to you. "

She drew from her pocket the letter which I had noticed in theafternoon, and laid it upon my knee. With my hands in my pockets--theroom was too cold to take them out--I read:--

 Dear Cousin Alison:--

 "I have been so lonely since mother died, that my health, never of the strongest, as you know, has suffered seriously. My physician tells me that something is wrong with the periphrastic action, if you know what that is, " [I suppose Miss Fellows meant the peristaltic action, ] "and prophesies something dreadful, (I've forgotten whether it was to be in the head, or the heart, or the stomach, ) if I cannot have change of air and scene this winter. I should dearly love to spend some time with you in your new home, (I fancy it will be drier than the old one, ) if convenient to you. If inconvenient, don't hesitate to say so, of course. I hope to hear from you soon. 

 "In haste, your aff. Cousin, "Gertrude Fellows. 

 "P. S. --I shall of course insist upon being a boarder if I come. 

 "G. F. "

"Hum-m. Insipid sort of letter. "

"Exactly. That's Gertrude. No more flavor than a frozen pear. If she hadone distinguishing peculiarity, good or bad, I believe I should likeher better. But I'm sorry for the woman. "

"Sorry enough to stand a winter of her?"

"If we hadn't just been through this moving! A new house andall, --nobody knows how the flues are yet, or whether we can heat a spareroom. She hasn't had a home, though, since Cousin Dorothy died. But Iwas thinking about you, you see. "

"O, she can't hurt me. She won't want the library, I suppose; nor myslippers, and the small bootjack. Let her come. "

My wife sighed a small sigh of relief out from the depths of herhospitable heart, and the little matter was settled and dismissed aslightly as are most little matters out of which grow the great ones. 

I had just begun to dream that night that Gertrude Fellows, in the shapeof a large wilted pear, had walked in and sat down on a dessert plate, when Allis gave me a little pinch and woke me. 

"My dear, Gertrude has _one_ peculiarity. I never thought of it tillthis minute. "

"Confound Gertrude's peculiarities! I want to go to sleep. Well, let'shave it. "

"Why, you see, she took up with some Spiritualistic notions after hermother's death; thought she held communications with her, and all that, Aunt Solomon says. "

"Stuff and nonsense!"

"Of course. But, Fred, dear, I'm inclined to think she _must_ have madeher sewing-table walk into the front entry; and Aunt Solomon says thespirits rapped out the whole of Cousin Dorothy's history on themantel-piece, behind those blue china vases, --you must have noticed themat the funeral, --and not a human hand within six feet. "

"Alison Hotchkiss!" I said, waking thoroughly, and sitting up in bed toemphasize the opinion, "when I hear a spirit rap on _my_ mantel-piece, and see _my_ tables walk about the front entry, I'll believe that, --notbefore!"

"O, I know it! I'm not a Spiritualist, I'm sure, and nothing would temptme to be. But still that sort of reasoning has a flaw in it, hasn't it, dear? The King of Siam, you know--"

I had heard of the King of Siam before, and I politely informed my wifethat I did not care to hear of him again. Spiritualism was a system ofrefined jugglery. Just another phase of the same thing which brings thedoves out of Mr. Hermann's empty hat. It might be entertaining if it hadnot become such an abominable imposition. There would always be nervouswomen and hypochondriac men enough for its dupes. I thanked Heaven thatI was neither, and went to sleep. 

Our new house was light and dry; the flues worked well, and the sparechamber heated admirably. The baby exchanged the champagne-basket forhis dainty pink-curtained crib; Tip began to recover from the perpetualcold with which three weeks' sitting in draughts, and tumbling intowater-pails, and playing in the sink, had sweetened his temper; Allisforsook her bandboxes for the crimson easy-chair (very becoming, thatchair), or tripped about on her own rested feet; we returned totable-cloths, civilized life, and a fork apiece. 

In short, nothing at all worth mentioning happened, till that onenight, --I think it was our first Sunday, --when Allis waked me at twelveo'clock with the announcement that some one was knocking at the door. Supposing it to be Bridget with the baby, --croup, probably, or a fit, --Iunlocked and unlatched it promptly. No one was there, however; andtelling my wife, in no very gentle tone, if I remember correctly, thatit would be a convenience, on such cold nights, if she could keep herdreams to herself, I shut the door distinctly and returned to my own. 

In the morning I observed a little white circle about each of Allis'sblue eyes, and after some urging she confessed to me that her sleep hadbeen much broken by a singular disturbance in the room. I might laugh ather if I chose, and she had not meant to tell me, but somebody hadrapped in that room all night long. 

"On the door?"

"On the door, on the mantel, on the foot of the bed, on thehead-board, --Fred, right on the head-board! I listened till I grew coldlistening, but it rapped and it rapped, and by and by it was morning, and it stopped. "

"Rats!" said I. 

"Then rats have knuckles, " said she. 

"Mice!" said I, "wind! broken plaster! crickets! imagination! dreams!fancies! blind headache! nonsense! Next time wake me up, and firepillows at me till I'm pleasant to you. Now I'll have a kiss and a cupof coffee. Any sugar in it?"

Tip fell down the cellar stairs that day, and the baby swallowed aneedle and two gutta-percha buttons, which I had been waiting a week tohave sewed on my vest, so that Alison had enough else to think about, and the little incident of the raps was forgotten. I believe it was notrecalled by either of us till after Gertrude Fellows came. 

It was on a Monday and in a drizzly storm that I brought her from thestation. She was a thin, cold, phantom-like woman, shrouded inwater-proofs and green _barège_ veils. Why is it that homely womenalways wear green _barège_ veils? She did not improve in appearance whenher wraps were off, and she was seated by my parlor grate. Her largegreen eyes had no speculation in them. Her mouth--an honest mouth, thatwas one mercy--quivered and shrank when she was addressed suddenly, asif she felt herself to be a sort of foot-ball that the world was kickingabout at pleasure, --your gentlest smile might prove a blow. She seldomspoke unless she were spoken to, and fell into long reveries, with hereyes on the window or the coals. She wore a horrible sort ofruff, --"illusion, " I think Allis called it, --which, of all contrivancesthat she could have chosen to encircle her sallow neck, was exactly themost unbecoming. She was always knitting blue stockings, --I neverdiscovered for what or whom; and she wore her lifeless hair in the shapeof a small toy cartwheel, on the back of her head. 

However, she brightened a little in the course of the first week, helpedAlison about the baby, kept herself out of my way, read her Bible andthe "Banner of Light" in about equal proportion, and became a mild, inoffensive, and, on the whole, not unpleasant addition to the family. 

She had been in the house about ten days, I think, when Alison, with adisturbed face, confided to me that she had spent another wakeful nightwith those "rats" behind the head-board; I had been down with asick-headache the day before, and she had not wakened me. I promised toset a trap and buy a cat before evening, and was closing the door uponthe subject, being already rather late at the office, when theexpression of Gertrude Fellows's face detained me. 

"If I were you, I--wouldn't--really buy a very expensive trap, Mr. Hotchkiss. It will be a waste of money, I am afraid. I heard the noisethat disturbed Cousin Alison"; and she sighed. 

I shut the door with a snap, and begged her to be so good as to explainherself. 

"It's of no use, " she said, doggedly. "You know you won't believe me. But that makes no difference. They come all the same. "

"_They_?" asked Allis, smiling. "Do you mean some of your spirits?"

The cold little woman flushed. "These are not _my_ spirits. I knownothing about them. I did not mean to obtrude a subject so disagreeableto you while I was in your family; but I have seldom been in a house inwhich the Influences were so strong. I don't know what they mean, noranything about them, but just that they're here. They wake me up, twitching my elbows, nearly every night. "

"Wake you up _how_?"

"Twitching my elbows, " she repeated, gravely. 

I broke into a laugh, from which neither my politeness nor the woman'sheightened color could save me, bought the cat and ordered the rat-trapwithout delay. 

That night, when Miss Fellows had "retired, "--she never "went to bed" insimple English like other people, --I stole softly out in my stockingsand screwed a little brass button outside of her door. I had made agimlet-hole for it in the morning when our guest was out shopping; itfitted into place without noise. Without noise I turned it, and wentback to my own room. 

"You suspect her, then?" said Alison. 

"One is always justified in suspecting a Spiritualistic medium. "

"I don't know about that, " Allis said, decidedly. "It may have beenmice that I heard last night, or the wind in a bottle, or any of theother proper and natural causes that explain away the ghost stories inthe children's papers; but it was not Gertrude. Women know somethingabout one another, my dear; and I tell you it was not Gertrude. "

"I don't assert that it was; but with the bolt on Gertrude's door, thecat in the kitchen, and the rat-trap on the garret stairs, I am stronglyinclined to anticipate a peaceful night. I will watch for a while, however, and you can go to sleep. "

She went to sleep, and I watched. I lay till half past eleven with myeyes staring at the dark, wide awake and undisturbed and triumphant. 

At half past eleven I must confess that I heard a singular sound. 

Something whistled at the keyhole. It could not have been the wind, bythe way, for there was no wind that night. Something else than the windwhistled in at the keyhole, sighed through into the room as much like along-drawn breath as anything, and fell with a slight clink upon thefloor. 

I lighted my candle and got up. I searched the floor of the room, andopened the door and searched the entry. Nothing was visible or audible, and I went back to bed. For about ten minutes I heard no furtherdisturbance, and was concluding myself to be in some undefined mannerthe victim of my own imagination, when there suddenly fell upon theheadboard of my bed a blow so distinct and loud that I involuntarilysprang at the sound of it. It wakened Alison, and I had the satisfactionof hearing her sleepily inquire if I had caught that rat yet? By way ofreply I relighted the candle, and gave the bed a shove which sent itrolling half across the room. I examined the wall; I examined the floor;I examined the headboard; I made Alison get up, so that I could shakethe mattresses. Meantime the pounding had recommenced, in rapid, irregular, blows, like the blows of a man's fist. The room adjoiningours was the nursery. I went in with my light. It was empty and silent. Bridget, with Tip and the baby, slept soundly in the large chamberacross the hall. While I was searching the room my wife called loudly tome, and I ran back. 

"It is on the mantel now, " she said. "It struck the mantel just afteryou left; then the ceiling, three times, very loud; then the mantelagain, --don't you hear?"

I heard distinctly; moreover, the mantel shook a little with theconcussion. I took out the fire-board and looked up the chimney; I tookout the register and looked down the furnace-pipe; I ransacked thegarret and the halls; finally, I examined Miss Fellows's door, --it waslocked as I had left it, upon the outside; and that locked door was theonly means of egress from the room, unless the occupant fancied that ofjumping from a two-story window upon a broad flight of stone steps. 

I came thoughtfully back across the hall; an invisible trip-hammerappeared to hit the floor beside me at every step; I attempted to stepaside from it, over it, away from it; but it followed me, pounding intomy room. 

"Wind?" suggested Allis. "Plaster cracking? Fancies? Dreams? Blindheadaches?--I should like to know which you have decided upon?"

Quiet fell upon the house after that for an hour, and I was droppinginto my first nap, when there came a light tap upon the door. Before Icould reach it, it had grown into a thundering blow. 

"Whatever it is I'll have it now!" I whispered, turned the latch withoutnoise, and flung the door wide into the hall. It was silent, dark, andcold. A little glimmer of moonlight fell in and showed me the figuresupon the carpet, outlined in a frosty bar. No hand or hammer, human orsuperhuman, was there. 

Determined to investigate matters a little more thoroughly, I asked mywife to stand upon the inside of the doorway while I kept watch upon theoutside. We took our position, and I closed the door between us. Instantly a series of furious blows struck the door; the sound was suchas would be made by a stick of oaken wood. The solid door quivered underit. 

"It's on your side!" said I. 

"No, it's on yours!" said she. 

"You're pounding yourself to fool me, " cried I. 

"You're pounding yourself to frighten me, " sobbed she. 

And we nearly had a quarrel. The sound continued with more or lessintermission till daybreak. Allis fell asleep, but I spent the time inappropriate reflections. 

Early in the morning I removed the button from Miss Fellows's door. Shenever knew anything about it. 

I believe, however, that I had the fairness to exculpate her in mysecret heart from any trickish connection with the disturbances of thatnight. 

"Just keep quiet about this little affair, " I said to my wife; "we shallcome across an explanation in time, and may never have any more of it. "

We kept quiet, and for five days so did "the spirits, " as Miss Fellowswas pleased to pronounce the trip-hammers. 

The fifth day I came home early, as it chanced, from the office. MissFellows was writing letters in the parlor. Allis, upstairs, was sortingand putting away the weekly wash. I came into the room and sat down bythe register to watch her. I always liked to watch her sitting there onthe floor with the little heaps of linen and cotton stuff piled likeblocks of snow about her, and her pink hands darting in and out of theuncertain sleeves that were just ready to give way in the gathers, trying the stockings' heels briskly, and testing the buttons with alittle jerk. 

She laid aside some under-clothing presently from the rest. "It willnot be needed again this winter, " she observed, "and had better go intothe cedar closet. " The garments, by the way, were marked and numbered inindelible ink. I heard her run over the figures in a busy, housekeeper'sundertone, before carrying them into the closet. She locked the closetdoor, I think, for I remember the click of the key. If I rememberaccurately, I stepped into the hall after that to light a cigar, andAlison flitted to and fro with her clothes, dropping the baby's littlewhite stockings every step or two, and anathematizing themdaintily--within orthodox bounds, of course. In about five minutes shecalled me; her voice was sharp and alarmed. 

"Come quick! O Fred, look here! All those clothes that I locked into thecedar closet are out here on the bed!"

"My dear wife, " I blandly observed, as I sauntered into the room, "toomuch of Gertrude Fellows hath made thee mad. Let _me_ see the clothes!"

She pointed to the bed. Some white clothing lay upon it, folded in anugly way, to represent a corpse, with crossed hands. 

"Is it meant for a joke, Alison? You did it yourself, I suppose!"

"Fred! I have not touched it with the tip of my little finger!"

"Gertrude, then?"

"Gertrude is in the parlor writing. "

So she was. I called her up. She looked surprised and troubled. 

"It must have been Bridget, " I proceeded, authoritatively, "or Tip. "

"Bridget is out walking with Tip and the baby. Jane is in the kitchenmaking pies. "

"At any rate these are not the clothes which you locked into the closet, however they came here. "

"The very same, Fred. See, I noticed the numbers 6 upon the stockings, 2on the night-caps, and--"

"Give me the key, " I interrupted. 

She gave me the key. I went to the cedar closet and tried the door. Itwas locked. I unlocked it, and opened the drawer in which my wifeassured me that the clothes had lain. Nothing was to be seen in it butthe linen towel which neatly covered the bottom. I lifted it and shookit. The drawer was empty. 

"Give me those clothes, if you please. "

She brought them to me. I made in my diary a careful memorandum of theirnaming and numbering; placed the articles myself in the drawer, --anupper drawer, so that there could be no mistake in identifying it;locked the drawer, put the key in my pocket; locked the door of thecloset, put the key in my pocket; locked the door of the room in whichthe closet was, and put that key in my pocket. 

We sat down then in the hall, all of us; Allis and Gertrude to fill themending-basket, I to smoke and consider. I saw Tip coming home with hisnurse presently, and started to go down and let him in, when a faintscream from my wife arrested me. I ran past Miss Fellows, who wassitting on the stairs, and into my room. Allis, going in to put awayTip's little plaid aprons, had stopped, rather pale, upon the threshold. Upon the bed lay some clothing, folded, as before, in rude, hideousimitation of the dead. 

I took each article in turn, and compared the name and number with thenames and numbers in my diary. They were identical throughout. I tookthe clothes, took the three keys from my pocket, unlocked the"cedar-room" door, unlocked the closet door, unlocked the upper drawer, and looked in. The drawer was empty. 

To say that from this time I failed to own--to myself, if not to otherpeople--that some mysterious influence, inexplicable by common orscientific causes, was at work in my house, would be to accuse myself ofmore obstinacy than even I am capable of. I propounded theory aftertheory, and gave it up. I arrived at conclusion upon conclusion, andthrew them aside. Finally, I held my peace, ceased to talk of "rats, "kept my mind in a state of passive vacancy, and narrowly and quietlywatched the progress of affairs. 

From the date of that escapade with the underclothes confusion reignedin our corner of Nemo's Avenue. That night neither my wife nor myselfclosed an eye, the house so resounded and re-echoed with the blows ofunseen hammers, fists, logs, and knuckles. 

Miss Fellows, too, was pale with her vigils, looked troubled, andproposed going home. This I peremptorily vetoed, determined if the womanhad any connection, honest or otherwise, with the mystery, to ferret itout. 

The following day, just after dinner, I was writing in the library, whena child's cry of fright and pain startled me. It seemed to come from thelittle yard behind the house, and I hurried thither to behold a singularsight. There was one apple-tree in the yard, --an old, stunted, crookedthing; and in that tree I found my son and heir, Tip, tied fast with asmall stout rope. "Tied" does not express it; he was gagged, manacled, twisted, contorted, wound about, crossed and recrossed, held without achance of motion, scarcely of breath. 

"You never tied yourself up here, child?" I asked, as I cut the knots. 

The question certainly was unnecessary. No juggler could have boundhimself in such a fashion; scarcely, then, a four-years' child. To mycontinued, clear, and gentle inquiries, the boy replied, persistentlyand consistently, that nobody tied him there, --"not Cousin Gertrude, norBridget, nor the baby, nor mamma, nor Jane, nor papa, nor the blackkitty"; he was "just tooken up all at once into the tree, and that wasall there was about it. " He "s'posed it must have been God, or somethinglike that, did it. "

Poor Tip had a hard time of it. Two days after that, while his motherand I sat discussing the incident, and the child was at play upon thefloor, he suddenly threw himself at full length, writhing with pain, andbegging to "have them pulled out quick!"

"Have _what_ pulled out?" exclaimed his terrified mother. She took thechild into her lap, and found that he was stuck over from head to footwith large white pins. 

"We haven't so many large pins in all the house, " she said as soon as hewas relieved. 

As she spoke the words thirty or forty _small_ pins pierced the boy. Where they came from no one could see. How they came there no one knew. We looked, and there they were, and Tip was crying and writhing asbefore. 

For the remainder of that winter we had scarcely a day of quiet. Therumor that "the Hotchkisses had rented a haunted house" leaked out andspread abroad. The frightened servants gave warning, and otherfrightened servants took their place, to leave in turn. My wife was herown cook and nursery-maid a quarter of the time. The disturbances variedin character with every week, assuming, as time went on, an importunitywhich, had we not quietly settled it in our own minds "not to be beatenby a noise, " would have driven us from the house. 

Night after night the mysterious fingers rapped at the windows, thedoors, the floors, the walls. Day after day uncomfortable tricks weresprung upon us by invisible agencies. We became used to the noises, sothat we slept through them easily; but many of the phenomena were sostrikingly unpleasant, and so singularly unsuited to the ordinaryconditions of human happiness and housekeeping, that we scarcelybecame--as one of our excellent deacons had a cheerful habit ofexhorting us to become--"resigned. "

Upon one occasion we had invited a small and select number of friends todine. It was to be rather a _recherché_ affair for Nemo's Avenue, and mywife had spared no painstaking to suit herself with her table. We hadhad a comparatively quiet house the night before, so that our cook, whohad been with us three days, consented to remain till our guests hadbeen provided for. The soup was good, the pigeons better, the bread was_not_ sour, and Allis looked hopeful, and inclined to trust Providencefor the gravies and dessert. 

It was just as I had begun to carve the beef that I observed my wifesuddenly pale, and a telegram from her eyes turned mine in the directionof General Popgun, who sat at her right hand. My sensations "can betterbe imagined than described" when I saw General Popgun's fork, untouchedby any human hand, dancing a jig on his plate. He grasped it and laid itfirmly down. As soon as he released his hold it leaped from the table. 

"Really--aw--very singular phenomena, " began the General; "verysingular! I was not prepared to credit the extraordinary accounts ofspiritual manifestations in this house, but--aw--Well, I must say--"

Instantly it was Pandemonium at that dinner-table. Dr. Jump's knife, Mrs. M'Ready's plate, and Colonel Hope's tumbler sprang from theirplaces. The pigeons flew from the platter, the caster rattled androlled, the salt-cellars bounded to and fro, and the gravies, moved bysome invisible disturber, spattered all over Mrs. Elias P. Critique's_moire antique_. 

Mortified and angered beyond endurance, I for the first time addressedthe spirits, --wrenched for the moment into a profound belief that theymust be spirits indeed. 

"Whatever you are, and wherever you are, " I shouted, bringing my handdown hard upon the table, "go out of this room and let us alone!"

The only reply was a furious mazourka of all the dishes on the table. Agentleman present, who had, as he afterward told us, studied the subjectof spiritualism somewhat, very sceptically and with unsatisfactoryresults, observed the performance keenly, and suggested that I shouldtry a gentler method of appeal. Whatever the agent was, --and what it washe had not yet discovered, --he had noticed repeatedly that the quietmodes of meeting it were most effective. 

Rather amused, I spoke more softly, addressing the caster, andintimating in my blandest manner that I and my guests would feel underobligations if we could have the room to ourselves till after we haddined. The disturbance gradually ceased, and we had no more of it thatday. 

A morning or two after Alison chanced to leave half a dozen teaspoonsupon the sideboard in the breakfast-room; they were of solid silver, andquite thick. She was going to rub them herself, I believe, and went intothe china-closet, which opens from the room, for the silver-soap. Thebreakfast-room was left vacant, and it was vacant when she returned toit, and she insists, with a quiet conviction which it is hardlyreasonable to doubt, that no human being did or could have entered theroom without her knowledge. When she came back to the sideboard everyone of those spoons lay there _bent double_. She showed them to me whenI came home at noon. Had they been pewter toys they could not have beenmore completely twisted out of shape than they were. I took them withoutany remarks (I began to feel as if this mystery were assuminguncomfortable proportions), put them away, just as I found them, into asmall cupboard in the wall of the breakfast-room, locked the cupboarddoor with the only key in the house which fitted it, put the key in myinner vest pocket, and meditatively ate my dinner. 

About half an hour afterward a neighbor dropped in to groan over theweather and see the baby, and Allis chanced to mention the incident ofthe spoons. 

"Really, Mrs. Hotchkiss!" said the lady, with a slight smile, and thatindefinite, quickly smothered change of eye which signifies, "I don'tbelieve a word of it!" "Are you sure that there is not a mistakesomewhere, or a little mental hallucination? The story is veryentertaining, but--I beg your pardon--I should be interested to seethose spoons. "

"Your curiosity shall be gratified, madam, " I said, a little testily;and taking the key from my pocket, I led her to the cupboard andunlocked the door. I found those spoons as straight, smooth, and fair asever spoons had been;--not a dent, not a wrinkle, not a bend nor untrueline could we discover anywhere upon them. 

"_Oh!_" said our visitor, significantly. 

That lady, be it recorded, then and thenceforward spared no pains tofound and strengthen throughout Nemo's Avenue the theory that "theHotchkisses were getting up all that spiritual nonsense to force theirlandlord into lower rents. And such respectable people too! It did seema pity, didn't it?"

One night I was alone in the library. It was late; about half-pasteleven, I think. The brightest gas jet was lighted, so that I could seeto every portion of the small room. The door was shut. There was nofurniture but the book-cases, my table, and chair; no sliding: doors orconcealed corners; no nook or cranny in which any human creature couldlurk unseen by me; and I say that I was alone. 

I had been writing to a confidential friend a somewhat minute accountof the disturbances in my house, which were now of about six weeks'duration. I had begged him to come and observe them for himself, and helpme out with a solution, --I myself was at a loss for a reasonable one. There certainly seemed to be evidence of superhuman agency; but I washardly ready yet to commit myself thoroughly to that view of the matter, and--

In the middle of that sentence I laid down my pen. A consciousness, sudden and distinct, came to me that I was not alone in that brightlittle silent room. Yet to mortal eyes alone I was. I pushed away mywriting and looked about. The warm air was empty of outline; thecurtains were undisturbed; the little recess under the library tableheld nothing but my own feet; there was no sound but the ordinaryrap-rapping on the floor, to which I had by this time become soaccustomed that often it passed unnoticed. I rose and examined the roomthoroughly, until quite satisfied that I was its only visible occupant;then sat down again. The rappings had meantime become loud andimpatient. 

I had learned that very week from Miss Fellows the spiritual alphabetwith which she was in the habit of "communicating with her dead mother. "I had never asked her, nor had she proposed, to use it herself for mybenefit. I had meant to try all other means of investigation beforeresorting to it. Now, however being alone, and being perplexed andannoyed by my sense of having invisible company, I turned and spelledout upon the table, so many raps to a letter till the question wascomplete:--

"_What do you want of me?_"

Instantly the answer came rapping back:--

"_Stretch down your hand. _"

I put my fingers under the table, and I felt, as indubitably as I everfelt a touch in my life, the grasp of a _warm, human hand_. 

I added to the broken paragraph in the letter to my friend a briefaccount of the occurrence, and reiterated my entreaties that he wouldcome at his earliest convenience to my house. He was an Episcopalclergyman, by the way, and I considered that his testimony would upholdmy fast-sinking character for veracity among my townspeople. I began tohave an impression that this dilemma in which I found myself was apretty serious one for a man of peaceable disposition and honestintentions to be in. 

About this time I undertook to come to a little better understandingwith Miss Fellows. I took her away alone, and having tried my best notto frighten the life out of her by my grave face, asked her seriouslyand kindly to tell me whether she supposed herself to have anyconnection with the phenomena in my house. To my surprise she answeredpromptly that she thought she had. I repressed a whistle, and "asked forinformation. "

"The presence of a medium renders easy what would otherwise beimpossible, " she replied. "I offered to go away, Mr. Hotchkiss, in thebeginning. "

I assured her that I had no desire to have her go away at present, andbegged her to proceed. 

"The Influences in the house are strong, as I have said before, " shecontinued, looking through me and beyond me with her vacant eyes. "Something is wrong. They are never at rest. I hear them. I feel them. Isee them. They go up and down the stairs with me. I find them in myroom. I see them gliding about. I see them standing now, with theirhands almost upon your shoulders. "

I confess to a kind of chill that crept down my backbone at these words, and to having turned my head and stared hard at the book-cases behindme. 

"But they--I mean something--rapped one night before you came, " Isuggested. 

"Yes, and they might rap after I was gone. The simple noises are notuncommon in places where there are no better means of communication. Theextreme methods of expression, such as you have witnessed this winter, are, I doubt not, practicable only when the system of a medium isaccessible. They write all sorts of messages for you. You would ridiculethem. I do not repeat them. You and Cousin Alison do not see, hear, feelas I do. We are differently made. There are lying spirits and true, goodspirits and bad. Sometimes the bad deceive and distress me, butsometimes--sometimes my mother comes. "

She lowered her voice reverently, and I was fain to hush the laugh uponmy lips. Whatever the thing might prove to be to me, it was dailycomfort to the nervous, unstrung, lonely woman, whom to suspect oftrickery I began to think was worse than stupidity. 

From the time of my midnight experience in the library I allowed myselfto look a little further into the subject of "communications. " MissFellows wrote them out at my request whenever they "came" to her. Writers on Spiritualism have described the process so frequently, thatit is unnecessary for me to dwell upon it at length. The influences tookher unawares in the usual manner. In the usual manner her arm--to allappearance the passive instrument of some unseen, powerfulagency--jerked and glided over the paper, writing in curious, scrawlycharacters, never in her own neat little old-fashioned hand, messages ofwhich, on coming out from the "trance" state, she would have-no memory;of many of which at any time she could have had no comprehension. Thesemessages assumed every variety of character from the tragic to theridiculous, and a large portion of them had no point whatever. 

One day Benjamin West desired to give me lessons in oil-painting. Thenext, my brother Joseph, dead now for ten years, asked forgiveness forhis share in a little quarrel of ours which had embittered a portion ofhis last days, --of which, by the way, I am confident that Miss Fellowsknew nothing. At one time I received a long discourse enlightening me onthe arrangement of the "spheres" in the disembodied state of existence. At another, Alison's dead grandfather pathetically reminded her of acertain Sunday afternoon at "meetin'" long ago, when the child Allishooked his wig off in the long prayer with a bent pin and a piece offish-line. 

One day we were saddened by the confused wail of a lost spirit, whorepresented his agonies as greater than soul could bear, and clamoredfor relief. Moved to pity, I inquired:--

"What can we do for you?"

Unseen knuckles rapped back the touching answer:--

"Give me a piece of squash pie!"

I remarked to Miss Fellows that I supposed this to be a modern andimproved version of the ancient drop of water which was to cool thetongue of Dives. She replied that it was the work of a mischievousspirit who had nothing better to do; they would not infrequently take inthat way the reply from the lips of another. I am not sure whether weare to have lips in the spiritual world, but I think that was herexpression. 

Through all the nonsense and confusion of these daily messages, however, one restless, indefinite purpose ran; a struggle for expression that wecould not grasp; a sense of something unperformed which was tormentingsomebody. 

One week we had been so much more than usually annoyed by the dancing oftables, shaking of doors, and breaking of crockery, that I lost allpatience, and at length vehemently dared our unseen tormentors to showthemselves. 

"Who and what are you?" I cried, "destroying the peace of my family inthis unendurable fashion. If you are mortal man, I will meet you asmortal man. Whatever you are, in the name of all fairness, let me seeyou!"

"If you see me it will be death to you, " tapped the Invisible. 

"Then let it be death to me! Come on! When shall I have the pleasure ofan interview?"

"To-morrow night at six o'clock. "

"To-morrow at six, then, be it. "

And to-morrow at six it was. Allis had a headache, and was lying downupstairs. Miss Fellows and I were with her, busy with cologne and tea, and one thing and another. I had, in fact, forgotten all about mysuperhuman appointment, when, just as the clock struck six, a low cryfrom Miss Fellows arrested my attention. 

"I see it!" she said. 

"See what?"

"A tall man wrapped in a sheet. "

"Your eyes are the only ones so favored, it happens, " I said, with asuperior smile. But while I spoke Allis started from the pillows with alook of fear. 

"_I_ see it, Fred!" she exclaimed, under her breath. 

"Women's imagination!" for I saw nothing. 

I saw nothing for a moment; then I must depose and say that I _did_ seea tall figure, covered from head to foot with a sheet, standing still inthe middle of the room. I sprang upon it with raised arm; my wife statesthat I was within a foot of it when the sheet dropped. It dropped at myfeet, --nothing but a sheet. I picked it up and shook it; only a sheet. 

"It is one of those old linen ones of grandmother's, " said Allis, examining it; "there are only six, marked in pink with the boar's-head inthe corner. It came from the blue chest up garret. They have not beentaken out for years. "

I took the sheet back to the blue chest myself, --having first observedthe number, as I had done before with the underclothes; and locked itin. I came back to my room and sat down by Allis. In about three minuteswe saw the figure standing still as before, in the middle of the room. As before, I sprang at it, and as before the drapery dropped, and therewas nothing there. I picked up the sheet and turned to the numberedcorner. It was the same that I had locked into the blue chest. 

Miss Fellows was inclined to fear that I had really endangered my lifeby this ghostly rendezvous. I can testify, however, that it was by nomeans "death to me, " nor did I experience any ill effects from theevent. 

My friend, the clergyman, made me the desired visit in January. For aweek after his arrival, as if my tormentors were bent on convincing myalmost only friend that I was a fool or a juggler, we had no disturbanceat all beyond the ordinary rappings. These, the reverend gentlemanconfessed were of a singular nature, but expressed a polite desire tosee some of the extraordinary manifestations of which I had written him. 

But one day he had risen with some formality to usher a formal caller tothe-door, when, to his slight amazement and my secret delight, hischair--an easy-chair of good proportions--deliberately jumped up andhopped after him across the room. From this period the mystery"manifested" itself to his heart's content. Not only did therocking-chairs, and the cane-seat chairs, and the round-backed chairs, and Tip's little chairs, and the affghans chase him about, and the heavy_tête-à-tête_ in the corner evince symptoms of agitation at hisapproach, but the piano trundled a solemn minuet at him; the heavywalnut centre-table rose half-way to the ceiling under his eyes; themarble-topped stand, on which he sat to keep it still, lifted itself andhim a foot from the ground; his coffee-cup spilled over when he tried todrink, shaken by an unseen elbow; his dressing-cases disappeared fromhis bureau and hid themselves, none knew how or when, in his closets andunder his bed; mysterious uncanny figures, dressed in his best clothesand stuffed with straw, stood in his room when he came to it at night;his candlesticks walked, untouched by hands, from the mantel into space;keys and chains fell from the air at his feet; and raw turnips droppedfrom the solid ceiling into his soup-plate. 

"Well, Garth, " said I one day, confidentially, "how are things? Begin tohave a 'realizing sense' of it, eh?"

"Let me think awhile, " he answered. 

I left him to his reflections, and devoted my attention for a day or twoto Gertrude Fellows. She seemed to have been of late receiving lessridiculous, less indefinite, and more important messages from herspiritual acquaintances. The burden of them was directed at me. Theywere sometimes confused, but never contradictory, and the sum of them, as I cast it up, was this:--

A former occupant of the house, one Mr. Timothy Jabbers, had been inearly life connected in the dry-goods business with my wife's father, and had, unknown to any but himself, defrauded his partner of aconsiderable sum for a young swindler, --some five hundred dollars, Ithink. This fact, kept in the knowledge only of God and the guilty man, had been his agony since his death. In the parlance of Spiritualism, hecould never "purify" his soul and rise to a higher "sphere" till he hadmade restitution, --though to that part of the communications I paidlittle attention. This money my wife, as her father's sole living heir, was entitled to, and this money I was desired to claim for her from Mr. Jabbers's estate, then in the hands of some wealthy nephews. 

I made some inquiries which led to the discovery that there had been aMr. Timothy Jabbers once the occupant of our house, that he had at oneperiod been in business with my wife's father, that he was now manyyears dead, and that his nephews in New York were his heirs. We neverattempted to bring any claim upon them, for three reasons: in the firstplace, because we knew we shouldn't get the money; in the second, because such a procedure would give so palpable an "object" in people'seyes for the disturbances at the house that we should, in allprobability, lose the entire confidence of the entire non-spiritualisticcommunity; thirdly, because I thought it problematical whether anyconstable of ordinary size and courage could be found who wouldundertake to summon the witness to testify in the county court atAtkinsville. 

I mention the matter only because, on the theories of Spiritualism, itappeared to give some point and occasion to the phenomena, and theirinfesting that particular house. 

Whether poor Mr. Timothy Jabbers felt relieved by having unburdenedhimself of his confession, I cannot state; but after he found that Ipaid some attention to his messages, he gradually ceased to expresshimself through turnips and cold keys; the rappings grew less violentand frequent, and finally ceased altogether. Shortly after that MissFellows went home. 

Garth and I talked matters over the day after she left. He had broughthis "thinking" to a close, whittled his opinions to a point, and wasquite ready to stick them into their places for my benefit, and leavethem there, as George Garth left all his opinions, immovable as theeverlasting hills. 

"How much had she to do with it now, --the Fellows?"

"Precisely what she said she had, no more. She was a medium, but not ajuggler. "

"No trickery about the affair, then?"

"No trickery could have sent that turnip into my soup-plate, or thatcandlestick walking into the air. There _is_ a great deal of trickerymixed with such phenomena. The next case you come across may be aregular cheat; but you will find it out, --you'll find it out. You've hadthree months to find this out, and you couldn't. Whatever may be theexplanation of the mystery, the man who can witness what you and I havewitnessed, and pronounce it the trick of that incapable, washed-outwoman, is either a liar or a fool. 

"You understand yourself and your wife, and you've tested your servantsfaithfully; so we're somewhat narrowed in our conclusions. "

"Well, then, what's the matter?"

I was, I confess, a little startled by the vehemence with which myfriend brought his clerical fist down upon the table, and exclaimed:--

"The Devil?"

"Dear me, Garth, don't swear; you in search of a pulpit just at thistime, too!"

"I tell you I never spoke more solemnly. I cannot, in the face of facts, ascribe all these phenomena to human agency. Something that comes weknow not whence, and goes we know not whither, is at work there in thedark. I am driven to grant to it an extra-human power. Yet when thatflabby Miss Fellows, in the trance state, undertakes to bring memessages from my dead wife, and when she attempts to recall the mosttender memories of our life together, I cannot, "--he paused and turnedhis face a little away, --"it would be pleasant to think I had a wordfrom Mary, but I cannot think she is there. I don't believe good spiritsconcern themselves with this thing. It has in its fair developments toomuch nonsense and too much positive sin; read a few numbers of the'Banner, ' or attend a convention or two, if you want to be convinced ofthat. If they 're not good spirits they're bad ones, that's all. I'vedipped into the subject in various ways since I have been here;consulted the mediums, talked with the prophets; I'm convinced thatthere is no dependence to be placed on the thing. You never learnanything from it that it is worth while to learn; above all, you nevercan trust its _prophecies_. It is evil, --_evil_ at the root; and exceptby physicians and scientific men it had better be let alone. They mayyet throw light on it; you and I cannot. I propose for myself to drop ithenceforth. In fact, it looks too much toward putting one's self onterms of intimacy with the Prince of the Powers of the Air to pleaseme. "

"You're rather positive, considering the difficulty of the subject, " Isaid. 

The truth is, and it may be about time to own to it, that the threemonths' siege against the mystery, which I had held so pertinaciouslythat winter, had driven me to broad terms of capitulation. I assented tomost of my friend's conclusions, but where he stopped I began a race forfurther light. I understood then, for the first time, the peculiar charmwhich I had often seen work so fatally with dabblers in Spiritualism. The fascination of the thing was upon me. I ransacked the papers foradvertisements of mediums. I went from city to city at their mysteriouscalls. I held _séances_ in my parlor, and frightened my wife withmessages--some of them ghastly enough--from her dead relatives, I ranthe usual gauntlet of strange seers in strange places, who told me myname, the names of all my friends, dead or alive, my secret aspirationsand peculiar characteristics, my past history and future prospects. 

For a long time they never made a failure. Absolute strangers told mefacts about myself which not even my own wife knew: whether they spokewith the tongues of devils, or whether, by some unknown laws ofmagnetism, they simply _read my thoughts_, I am not even now prepared tosay. I think if they had made a miss I should have been spared somesuffering. Their communications had sometimes a ridiculous aimlessness, and occasionally a subtle deviltry coated about with religion, like apill with sugar, but often a significant and fearful accuracy. 

Once, I remember, they foretold an indefinite calamity to be broughtupon me before sunset on the following Saturday. Before sunset on thatSaturday I lost a thousand dollars in mining stock which had stood inall Eastern eyes as solid as its own gold. At another time I was warnedby a medium in Philadelphia that my wife, then visiting in Boston, wastaken suddenly ill. I had left her in perfect health; but feelingnevertheless uneasy, I took the night train and went directly to her. Ifound her in the agonies of a severe attack of pleurisy, just preparingto send a telegram to me. 

"Their prophecies are unreliable, notwithstanding coincidences, " wroteGeorge Garth. "Let them alone, Fred, I beg of you. You will regret it ifyou don't. "

"Once let me be fairly taken in and cheated to my face, " I made reply, "and I may compress my views to your platform. Until then I must gang myown gait. "

I now come to the remarkable portion of my story, --at least it seemsto me the remarkable portion under my present conditions of vision. 

In August of the summer following Miss Fellows's visit, and themanifestations in my house at Atkinsville, I was startled one pleasantmorning, while sitting in the office of a medium in Washington Street inBoston, by a singularly unpleasant communication. 

"The second day of next May, " wrote the medium, --she wrote with theforefinger of one hand upon the palm of the other, --"the second of May, at one o'clock in the afternoon, you will be summoned into a spiritualstate of existence. "

"I suppose, in good English, that means I'm going to die, " I replied, carelessly. "Would you be so good as to write it with a pen and ink, that there may be no mistake?"

She wrote it distinctly: "The second of May, at one o'clock in theafternoon. "

I pocketed the slip of paper for further use, and sat reflecting. 

"How do you know it?"

"_I_ don't know it. I am told. "

"Who tells you?"

"Jerusha Babcock and George Washington. "

Jerusha Babcock was the name of my maternal grandmother. What could thewoman know of my maternal grandmother? It did not occur to me, Ibelieve, to wonder what occasion George Washington could find to concernhimself about my dying or my living. There stood the uncanny Jerusha aspledge that my informant knew what she was talking about. I left theoffice with an uneasy sinking at the heart. There was a coffin-storenear by, and I remember the peculiar interest with which I studied thequilting of the satin lining, and the peculiar crawling sensation whichcrept to my fingers' ends. 

Determined not to be unnecessarily alarmed, I spent the next three weeksin testing the communication. I visited one more medium in Boston, twoin New York, one in New Haven, one in Philadelphia, and one in a littleout-of-the-way Connecticut village, where I spent a night, and did notknow a soul. None of these people, I am confident, had ever seen my faceor heard, my name before. 

It was a circumstance calculated at least to arrest attention, thatthese seven people, each unknown to the others, and without concert withthe others, repeated the ugly message which had sought me out throughthe happy summer morning in Washington Street. There was no hesitation, no doubt, no contradiction. I could not trip them or cross-question themout of it. Unerring, assured, and consistent, the fiat went forth:--

"On the second of May, at one o'clock in the afternoon, you will passout of the body. "

I would not have believed them if I could have helped myself, I sighedfor the calm days when I had laughed at medium and prophet, and sneeredat ghost and rapping. I took lodgings in Philadelphia, locked my doors, and paced my rooms all day and half the night, tortured by my thoughts, and consulting books of medicine to discover what evidence I could byany possibility give of unsuspected disease. I was at that timeabsolutely well and strong; absolutely well and strong I was forced toconfess myself, after having waded through Latin adjectives andanatomical illustrations enough to make a ghost of Hercules. I devotedtwo days to researches in genealogical pathology, and was rewarded formy pains by discovering myself to be the possessor of one great-aunt whohad died of heart disease at the advanced age of two months. 

Heart disease, then, I settled upon. The alternative was accident. "Which will it be?" I asked in vain. Upon this point my friends themediums held a delicate reserve. "The Influences were confusing, andthey were not prepared to state with exactness. "

"Why _don't_ you come home?" my wife wrote in distress and perplexity. "You promised to come ten days ago, and they need you at the office, andI need you more than anybody. "

"I need you more than anybody!" When the little clinging needs of threeweeks grew into the great want of a lifetime, --O, how could I tell _her_what was coming?

I did not tell her. When I had hurried home, when she came boundingthrough the hall to meet me, when she held up her face, half laughing, half crying, and flushing and paling, to mine, --the poor little facethat by and by would never watch and glow at my coming, --I could nottell her. 

When the children were in bed and we were alone after tea, she climbedgravely up into my lap from the little cricket on which she had beensitting, and put her hands upon my shoulders. 

"You're sober, Fred, and pale. Something ails you, you know, and you aregoing to tell me all about it. "

Her pretty, mischievous face swam suddenly before my eyes. I kissed it, put her gently down as I would a child, and went away alone till I feltmore like myself. 

The winter set in gloomily enough. It may have been the snow-storms, ofwhich we had an average of one every other day, or it may have been thestorm in my own heart which I was weathering alone. 

Whether to believe those people, or whether to laugh at theirpredictions; whether to tell my wife, or whether to continuesilent, --these questions tormented me through many wakeful nights anddreary days. My fears were in nowise allayed by a letter which' Ireceived one day in January from Gertrude Fellows. 

"Why don't you read it aloud? What's the news?" asked Alison. But at oneglance over the opening page I folded the sheet, and did not read ittill I could lock myself into the library alone. The letter ran:--

"I have been much disturbed lately on your behalf. My mother and yourbrother Joseph appear to me nearly every day, and charge me with somemessage to you which I cannot distinctly grasp. It seems to be clear, however, as far as this: that some calamity is to befall you in thespring, --in May, I should say. It seems to me to be of the nature ofdeath. I do not learn that you can avoid it, but that they desire you tobe prepared for it. "

After receiving this last warning, certain uncomfortable words filedthrough my brain for days together:--

"Set thine house in order, for thou shalt surely die. "

"Never knew you read your Bible so much in all your life, " said Alison, with a pretty pout. "You'll grow so good that I can't begin to keep upwith you. When I try to read my polyglot, the baby comes and bites thecorners, and squeals till I put it away and take him up. "

As the winter wore away I arrived at this conclusion: If I were in factdestined to death in the spring, my wife could not help herself or me bythe knowledge of it. If events proved that I was deluded in the dread, and I had shared it with her, she would have had all her pain andanxiety to no purpose. In either case I would insure her happiness forthese few months; they might be her last happy months. At any ratehappiness was a good thing, and she could not have too much of it. Tosay that I myself felt no uneasiness as to the event would beaffectation. The old sword of Damocles hung over me. The hair mighthold, but it was a hair. 

As the winter passed, --it seemed to me as if winter had never passed sorapidly before, --I found it natural to watch my health with the mostcareful scrutiny; to avoid improper food and undue excitement; torefrain from long and perilous journeys; to consider whether each newcook who entered the family might have occasion to poison me. It was ananomaly which I did not observe at the time, that while in my heart ofhearts I expected to breathe my last upon the second of May, I yetcherished a distinct plan of fighting, cheating, persuading, orovermatching death. 

I closed a large speculation on which I had been inclined, in thesummer, to "fly"; Alison could never manage petroleum ventures. I woundup my business in a safe and systematic manner. "Hotchkiss must mean toretire, " people said. I revised my will, and held one long and necessaryconversation with my wife about her future, should "anything happen" tome. She listened and planned without tears or exclamations; but after wehad finished the talk, she crept up to me with a quiet, puzzled sadnessthat I could not bear. 

"You are growing so blue lately, Fred! Why, what can 'happen' to you? Idon't believe God can mean to leave me here after you are gone; I don'tbelieve he _can_ mean to!"

All through the sweet spring days we were much together. I went late tothe office. I came home early. I spent the beautiful twilights at home. I followed her about the house. I made her read to me, sing to me, sitby me, touch me with her little, soft hand. I watched her face till thesight choked me. How soon before she would know? How soon?

"I feel as if we'd just been married over again, " she said one day, pinching my cheek with a low laugh. "You are so good! I'd no idea youcared so much about me. By and by, when you get over this lazy fit andgo about as you used to, I shall feel so deserted, --you've no idea! Ibelieve I will order a little widow's cap, and put it on, and wear itabout, --now, what do you mean by getting up and stalking off to look outof the window? Fine prospect you must have, with the curtain down!"

It is, to say the least, an uncomfortable state of affairs when you findyourself drawing within a fortnight of the day on which seven peoplehave assured you that, you are going to shuffle off this mortal coil. Itis not agreeable to have no more idea than the dead (probably not asmuch) of the manner in which your demise is to be effected. It is not inall respects a cheerful mode of existence to dress yourself in themorning with the reflection that you are never to half wear out yournew mottled coat, and that this striped neck-tie will be laid away byand by in a little box, and cried over by your wife; to hear yourimmediate acquaintances all wondering why you _don't_ get yourself somenew boots; to know that your partner has been heard to say that you aregrowing dull at trade; to find the children complaining that you haveengaged no rooms yet at the beach; to look into their upturned eyes andwonder how long it is going to take for them to forget you; to go outafter breakfast and wonder how many more times you will shut that frontdoor; to come home in the perfumed dusk and see the faces pressedagainst the window to watch for you, and feel warm arms about your neck, and wonder how soon they will shrink from the chill of you; to feel theglow of the budding world, and think how blossom and fruit will crimsonand drop without you, and wonder how the blossom and fruit of life canslip from you in the time of violet smells and orioles. 

April, spattered with showers and dripped upon a little with ineffectualsuns, slid restlessly away from me, and I locked my office door onenight, reflecting that it was the night of the first of May, and thatto-morrow was the second. 

I spent the evening alone with my wife. I have spent more agreeableevenings. She came and nestled at my feet, and the firelight painted hercheeks and hair, and her eyes followed me, and her hand was in mine; butI have spent more agreeable evenings. 

The morning of the second broke without a cloud. Blue jays flashed pastmy window; a bed of royal pansies opened to the sun, and the smell ofthe fresh, moist earth came up where Tip was digging in his littlegarden. 

"Not feeling exactly like work to-day, " as I told my wife, I did not goto the office. I asked her to come into the library and sit with me. Iremember that she had a pudding to bake, and refused at first; thenyielded, laughing, and said that I must go without my dessert. I thoughtit highly probable that I _should_ go without my dessert. 

I remember precisely how pretty she was that morning. She wore a brightdress, --blue, I think, --and a white crocus in her hair; she had a daintywhite apron tied on, "to cook in, " she said, and her pink nails werepowdered with flour. Her eyes laughed and twinkled at me. I rememberthinking how young she looked, and how unready for suffering. I rememberthat she brought the baby in after a while, and that Tip came all muddyfrom the garden, dragging his tiny hoe over the carpet; that the windowwas open, and that, while we all sat there together, a little brown birdbrought some twine and built a nest on an apple-bough just in sight. 

I find it difficult to explain the anxiety which I felt, as the, morningwore on, that dinner should be punctually upon the table at half pasttwelve. But I now understand perfectly, as I did not once, the oldphilosophy: "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. "

It was ironing-day, and our dinners were apt to be late uponironing-days. I concluded that, if the soup were punctual, and not toohot, I could leave myself ten or perhaps fifteen unoccupied minutesbefore one o'clock. It strikes me as curious now, the gravity with whichthis thought underran the fever and pain and dread of the morning. 

I fell to reading my hymn-book about twelve o'clock, and when Alisoncalled me to dinner I did not remember to consult my watch. 

The soup was good, though hot. A grim Epicurean stolidity crept over meas I sat down before it. A man had better make the most of his lastchance at mock-turtle. Fifteen minutes were enough to die in. 

I am confident that I ate more rapidly than is consistent withconsummate elegance. I remember that Tip imitated me, and that Allisopened her eyes at me. I recall distinctly the fact that I had passed myplate a second time. 

I had passed my plate a second time, I say, and had just raised thespoon to my lips, when it fell from my palsied hand; for the littlebronze clock upon the mantel struck one. 

I sat with drawn breath and glared at it; at the relentless silverhands; at the fierce, and, as it seemed to me, _living_ face of the Timeon its top, who stooped and swung his scythe at me. 

"I would like a very _big_ white potato, " said Tip, breaking the solemnsilence. 

You may or may not believe me, but it is a fact that that is all whichhappened. 

 * * * * *

I slowly turned my head. I resumed my spoon. 

"The kitchen clock is nearly half an hour too slow, " observed Alison. "Itold Jane that you would have it fixed this week. "

I finished my soup in silence. 

It may interest the reader to learn that up to the date of this article"I still live. "

"Little Tommy Tucker. "

There were but three persons in the car; a merchant, deep in the incomelist of the "Traveller, " an old lady with two bandboxes, a man in thecorner with his hat pulled over his eyes. 

Tommy opened the door, peeped in, hesitated, looked into another car, came back, gave his little fiddle a shove on his shoulder, and walkedin. 

 "Hi! Little Tommy Tucker Plays for his supper, "

shouted the young exquisite lounging on the platform in tan-colored coatand lavender kid gloves. 

"O Kids, you're there, are you? Well, I'd rather play for it than loaffor it, _I_ had, " said Tommy, stoutly. 

The merchant shot a careless glance over the top of his paper, at thesound of this _petit dialogue_, and the old lady smiled benignly; theman in the corner neither looked nor smiled. 

Nobody would have thought, to look at that man in the corner, that hewas at that very moment deserting a wife and five children. Yet that isprecisely what he was doing. 

A villain? O no, that is not the word. A brute? Not by any means. Aman, weak, unfortunate, discouraged, and selfish, as weak, unfortunate, and discouraged people are apt to be; that was the amount of it. Hispanoramas never paid him for the use of his halls. His travellingtin-type saloon had trundled him into a sheriff's hands. His petroleumspeculations had crashed like a bubble. His black and gold sign, _J. Harmon, Photographer_, had swung now for nearly a year over thedentist's rooms, and he had had the patronage of precisely six old womenand three babies. He had drifted to the theatre in the evenings, he didnot care now to remember how many times, --the fellows asked him, and itmade him forget his troubles; the next morning his empty purse wouldgape at him, and Annie's mouth would quiver. A man must have his glasstoo, on Sundays, and--well, perhaps a little oftener. He had not alwaysbeen fit to go to work after it; and Annie's mouth would quiver. It willbe seen at once that it was exceedingly hard on a man that his wife'smouth should quiver. "Confound it! Why couldn't she scold or cry? Thesestill women aggravated a fellow beyond reason. "

Well, then the children had been sick; measles, whooping-cough, scarlatina, mumps, he was sure he did not know what not; every one ofthem from the baby up. There was medicine, and there were doctor'sbills, and there was sitting up with them at night, --their motherusually did that. Then she must needs pale down herself, like a poorlyfinished photograph; all her color and roundness and sparkle gone; andif ever a man liked to have a pretty wife about, it was he. Moreover shehad a cough, and her shoulders had grown round, stooping so much overthe heavy baby, and her breath came short, and she had a way of beingtired. Then she never stirred out of the house, --he found out about thatone day; she had no bonnet, and her shawl had been cut up into blanketsfor the crib. The children had stopped going to school. "They could notbuy the new arithmetic, " their mother said, half under her breath. Yesterday there was nothing for dinner but Johnny-cake, nor a large oneat that. To-morrow the saloon rents were due. Annie talked about pawningone of the bureaus. Annie had had great purple rings under her eyes forsix weeks. 

He would not bear the purple rings and quivering mouth any longer. Hehated the sight of her, for the sight stung him. He hated the corn-cakeand the untaught children. He hated the whole dreary, dragging, needyhome. The ruin of it dogged him like a ghost, and he should be the ruinof it as long as he stayed in it. Once fairly rid of him, his scoldingand drinking, his wasting and failing, Annie would send the children towork, and find ways to live. She had energy and invention, a plenty ofit in her young, fresh days, before he came across her life to drag herdown. Perhaps he should make a golden fortune and come back to her somesummer day with a silk dress and servants, and make it all up; in theorythis was about what he expected to do. But if his ill luck went westwardwith him, and the silk dress never turned up, why, she would forget him, and be better off, and that would be the end of it. 

So here he was, ticketed and started, fairly bound for Colorado, sittingwith his hat over his eyes, and thinking about it. 

"Hm-m. Asleep, " pronounced Tommy, with his keen glance into the corner. "Guess I'll wake him up. "

He laid his cheek down on his little fiddle, --you don't know how Tommyloved that little fiddle, --and struck up a gay, rollicking tune, --

"I care for nobody and nobody cares for me. "

The man in the corner sat quite still. When it was over he shrugged hisshoulders. 

"When folks are asleep they don't hist their shoulders, not as a generalthing, " observed Tommy. "We'll try another. "

Tommy tried another. Nobody knows what possessed the little fellow, thelittle fellow himself least of all; but he tried this:--

 "We've lived and loved together, Through many changing years. "

It was a new tune, and he wanted practice, perhaps. 

The train jarred and started slowly; the gloved exquisite, waitinghackmen, baggage-masters, coffee-counter, and station-walls slid back;engine-house and prison towers, and labyrinths of tracks slipped by;lumber and shipping took their place, with clear spaces between, wheresea and sky shone through. The speed of the train increased with asickening sway; old wharves shot past, with the green water sucking attheir piers; the city shifted by and out of sight. 

 "We've lived and loved together, "

played Tommy in a little plaintive wail, "We've lived and loved--"

"Confound the boy!" Harmon pushed up his hat with a jerk, and looked outof the window. The night was coming on. A dull sunset lay low on thewater, burning like a bale-fire through the snaky trail of smoke thatwent writhing past the car windows. Against lonely signal-houses andlittle deserted beaches the water was plashing drearily, and playingmonotonous bases to Tommy's wail:--

 "Through many changing years, Many changing years. "

It was a nuisance, this music in the cars. Why didn't somebody stop it?What did the child mean by playing that? They had left the city farbehind now. He wondered how far. He pushed up the window fiercely, venting the passion of the music on the first thing that came in hisway, and thrust his head out to look back. Through the undulating smoke, out in the pale glimmer from the sky, he could see a low, red tongue ofland, covered with the twinkle of lighted homes. Somewhere there, inamong the quivering warmth, was one--

What was that boy about now? Not "Home, sweet Home?" But that was whatTommy was about. 

They were lighting the lamps now in the car. Harmon looked at theconductor's face, as the sickly yellow flare struck on it, with acurious sensation. He wondered if he had a wife and five children; if heever thought of running away from them; what he would think of a man whodid; what most people would think; what she would think. She!--ah, shehad it all to find out yet. 

 "There's no place like home, "

said Tommy's little fiddle, "O, no place like home. "

Now this fiddle of Tommy's may have had a crack or so in it, and Icannot assert that Tommy never struck a false note; but the man in thecorner was not fastidious as a musical critic; the sickly light wasflickering through the car, the quiver on the red flats was quite out ofsight, the train was shrieking away into the west, --the baleful, lonelywest, --which was dying fast now out there upon the sea, and it is a factthat his hat went slowly down over his face again, and that his facewent slowly down upon his arm. 

There, in the lighted home out upon the flats, that had drifted byforever, she sat waiting now. It was about time for him to be in tosupper; she was beginning to wonder a little where he was; she waskeeping the coffee hot, and telling the children not to touch theirfather's pickles; she had set the table and drawn the chairs; his pipelay filled for him upon the shelf over the stove. Her face in the lightwas worn and white, --the dark rings very dark; she was trying to hushthe boys, teasing for their supper; begging them to wait a few minutes, only a few minutes, he would surely be here then. She would put the babydown presently, and stand at the window with her hands--Annie's handsonce were not so thin--raised to shut out the light, --watching, watching. 

The children would eat their supper; the table would stand untouched, with his chair in its place; still she would go to the window, and standwatching, watching. O, the long night that she must stand watching, andthe days, and the years!

"Sweet, sweet home, "

played Tommy. 

By and by there was no more of "Sweet Home. "

"How about that cove with his head lopped down on his arms?" speculatedTommy, with a businesslike air. 

He had only stirred once, then put his face down again. But he wasawake, awake in every nerve; and listening, to the very curve of hisfingers. Tommy knew that; it being part of his trade to learn how to usehis eyes. 

The sweet, loyal passion of the music--it would take worse playing thanTommy's to drive the sweet, loyal passion out of Annie Laurie--grewabove the din of the train:--

 "'T was there that Annie Laurie Gave me her promise true. "

She used to sing that, the man was thinking, --this other Annie of hisown. Why, she had been his own, and he had loved her once. How he hadloved her! Yes, she used to sing that when he went to see her on Sundaynights, before they were married, --in her pink, plump, pretty days. Annie used to be very pretty. 

 "Gave me her promise true, "

hummed the little fiddle. 

"That's a fact, " said poor Annie's husband, jerking the words out underhis hat, "and kept it too, she did. "

Ah, how Annie had kept it! The whole dark picture of her marriedyears, --the days of work and pain, the nights of watching, the patientvoice, the quivering mouth, the tact and the planning and the trust forto-morrow, the love that had borne all things, believed all things, hoped all things, uncomplaining, --rose into outline to tell him how shehad kept it. 

 "Her face is as the fairest That e'er the sun shone on, "

suggested the little fiddle. 

That it should be darkened forever, the sweet face! and that he shoulddo it, --he, sitting here, with his ticket bought, bound for Colorado. 

 "And ne'er forget will I, "

murmured the little fiddle. 

He would have knocked the man down who had told him twenty years agothat he ever should forget; that he should be here to-night, with histicket bought, bound for Colorado. 

But it was better for her to be free from him. He and his cursedill-luck were a drag on her and the children, and would always be. Whatwas that she had said once?

"Never mind, Jack, I can bear anything as long as I have you. "

And here he was, with his ticket bought, bound for Colorado. 

He wondered if it were ever too late in the day for a fellow to make aman of himself. He wondered--

 "And she's a' the world to me, And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me down and dee, "

sang the little fiddle, triumphantly. 

Harmon shook himself, and stood up. The train was slackening; thelights of a way-station bright ahead. It was about time for supper andhis mother, so Tommy put down his fiddle and handed around his fadedcap. 

The merchant threw him a penny, and returned to his tax list. The oldlady was fast asleep with her mouth open. 

"Come here, " growled Harmon, with his eyes very bright. Tommy shrankback, almost afraid of him. 

"Come here, " softening, "I won't hurt you. I tell you, boy, you don'tknow what you've done to-night. "

"Done, sir?" Tommy couldn't help laughing, though there was a twinge ofpain at his stout little heart, as he fingered the solitary penny in thefaded cap. "Done? Well, I guess I've waked you up, sir, which was aboutwhat I meant to do. "

"Yes, that is it, " said Harmon, very distinctly, pushing up his hat, "you've waked me up. Here, hold your cap. "

They had puffed into the station now, and stopped. He emptied his purseinto the little cap, shook it clean of paper and copper alike, was outof the car and off the train before Tommy could have said Jack Robinson. 

"My eyes!" gasped Tommy, "that chap had a ticket for New York, sure!Methuselah! Look a here! One, two, three, --must have been crazy; that'sit, crazy. "

"He'll never find out, " muttered Harmon, turning away from the stationlights, and striking back through the night for the red flats and home. "He'll never find out what he has done, nor, please God, shall she. "

It was late when he came in sight of the house; it had been a long trampacross the tracks, and hard; he being stung by a bitter wind from theeast all the way, tired with the monotonous treading of the sleepers, and with crouching in perilous niches to let the trains go by. 

She stood watching at the window, as he had known that she would stand, her hands raised to her face, her figure cut out against the warm lightof the room. 

He stood still a moment and looked at her, hidden in the shadow of thestreet, thinking his own thoughts. The publican, in the old story, hardly entered the beautiful temple with more humble step than he hishome that night. 

She sprang to meet him, pale with her watching and fear. 

"Worried, Annie, were you? I haven't been drinking; don't befrightened, --no, not the theatre, either, this time. Some business, dear; business that delayed me. I'm sorry you were worried, I am, Annie. I've had a long walk. It is pleasant here. I believe I'm tired, Annie. "

He faltered, and turned away his face. 

"Dear me, " said Annie, "why, you poor fellow, you are all tired out. Sit right up here by the fire, and I will bring the coffee. I've triedso hard not to let it boil away, you don't know, Jack, and I was soafraid something had happened to you. "

Her face, her voice, her touch, seemed more than he could bear for aminute, perhaps. He gulped down his coffee, choking. 

"Annie, look here. " He put down his cup, trying to smile and make a jestof the words. "Suppose a fellow had it in him to be a rascal, and nobodyever knew it, eh?"

"I should rather not know it, if I were his wife, " said Annie, simply. 

"But you couldn't care anything more for him, you know, Annie?"

"I don't know, " said Annie, shaking her head with a little perplexedsmile, "you would be just Jack, _any how_. "

Jack coughed, took up his coffee-cup, set it down hard, strode once ortwice across the room, kissed the baby in the crib, kissed his wife, andsat down again, winking at the fire. 

"I wonder if He had anything to do with sending him, " he said, presently, under his breath. 

"Sending whom?" asked puzzled Annie. 

"Business, dear, just business. I was thinking of a boy who did a littlejob for me to-night, that's all. "

And that is all that she knows to this day about the man sitting in thecorner, with his hat over his eyes, bound for Colorado. 

One of the Elect. 

"Down, Muff! down!"

Muff obeyed; he took his paws off from his master's shoulders with aninjured look in his great mute eyes, and consoled himself by growling atthe cow. Mr. Ryck put a sudden stop to a series of gymnastic exercisescommenced between them, by throwing the creature's hay down upon herhorns; then he watered his horse, fed the sheep, took a look at thehens, and closed all the doors tightly; for the night was cold, so coldthat he shivered, even under that great bottle-green coat of his: he wasnot a young man. 

"Pretty cold night, Muff!" Muff was not blest with a forgivingdisposition; he maintained a dignified silence. But his master did notfeel the slight. Something, perhaps the cold, made him careless of thedog to-night. 

The house was warm, at least; the light streamed far out of the kitchenwindow, down almost to the orchard. He passed across it, showing hisfigure a little stooping, and the flutter of gray hair from under hishat; then into the house. His wife was busied about the room, a pleasantroom for a kitchen, with the cleanest of polished floors and whitenedtables; the cheeriest of fires, the home-like faces of blue and whitechina peeping through the closet door; a few books upon a little shelf, with an old Bible among them; the cosey rocking-chair that always stoodby the fire, and a plant or two in the south window. He came in, stamping off the snow; Muff crawled behind the stove, and gave himselfup to a fit of metaphysics. 

"Cold, Amos?"

"Of course. What else should I be, woman?"

His wife made no reply. His unusual impatience only saddened her eyes alittle. She was one of those women who would have borne a life-longoppression with dumb lips. Amos Ryck was not an unkind husband, but itwas not his way to be tender; the years which had whitened his hair hadbrought him stern experiences: life was to him a battle, his horizonalways that about a combatant. But he loved her. 

"Most ready to sit down, Martha?" he said at last, more gently. 

"In a minute, Amos. "

She finished some bit of evening work, her step soft about the room. Then she drew up the low rocking-chair with its covering of fadedcrimson chintz, and sat down by her husband. 

She did this without noise; she did not sit too near to him; she tookpains not to annoy him by any feminine bustle over her work; she choseher knitting, as being always most to his fancy; then she looked uptimidly into his face. But there was a frown, slight to be sure, butstill a frown, upon it, neither did he speak. Some gloomy, perhaps somebitter thought held the man. A reflection of it might have struck acrossher, as she turned her head, fixing her eyes upon the coals. 

The light on her face showed it pale; the lines on her mouth were deeperthan any time had worn for her husband; her hair as gray as his, thoughhe was already a man of grave, middle age, when the little wife--hardlypast her sixteenth birthday--came to the farm with him. 

Perhaps it is these silent women--spiritless, timid souls, like thisone, --who have, after all, the greatest capacity for suffering. Youmight have thought so, if you had watched her. Some infinite mourninglooked out of her mute brown eyes. In the very folding of her handsthere was a sort of stifled cry, as one whose abiding place is in theValley of the Shadow. 

A monotonous sob of the wind broke at the corners of the house; in thesilence between the two, it was distinctly heard. Martha Ryck's facepaled a little. 

"I wish--" She tried to laugh. "Amos, it cries just like a baby. "

"Nonsense!"

Her husband rose impatiently, and walked to the window. He was not givento fancies; all his life was ruled and squared up to a creed. Yet Idoubt if he liked the sound of that wind much better than the woman. Hethrummed upon the window-sill, then turned sharply away. 

"There's a storm up, a cold one too. "

"It stormed when--"

But Mrs. Ryck did not finish her sentence. Her husband, coming back tohis seat, tripped over a stool, --a little thing it was, fit only for achild; a bit of dingy carpet covered it: once it had been bright. 

"Martha, what _do_ you keep this about for? It's always in the way!"setting it up angrily against the wall. 

"I won't, if you'd rather not, Amos. "

The farmer took up an almanac, and counted out the time when theminister's salary and the butcher's bill were due; it gave occasion formaking no reply. 

"Amos!" she said at last. He put down his book. 

"Amos, do you remember what day it is?"

"I'm not likely to forget. " His face darkened. 

"Amos, " again, more timidly, "do you suppose we shall ever find out?"

"How can I tell?"

"Ever know anything, --just a little?"

"We know enough, Martha. "

"Amos! Amos!" her voice rising to a bitter cry, "we don't know enough!God's the only one that knows enough. He knows whether she's alive, andif she's dead he knows, and where she is; if there was ever any hope, and if her mother--"

"Hope, Martha, for _her_!"

She had been looking into the fire, her attitude unchanged, her handswrung one into the other. She roused at that, something in her face asif one flared a sudden light upon the dead. 

"What ails you, Amos? You're her father; you loved her when she was alittle, innocent child. "

When she was a child, and innocent, --yes. _That_ was long ago. Hestopped his walk across the room, and sat down, his face twitchingnervously. But he had nothing to say, --not one word to the patient womanwatching him there in the firelight, not one for love of the child whohad climbed upon his knee and kissed him in that very room, who hadplayed upon that little faded cricket, and wound her arms about themother's neck, sitting just so, as she sat now. Yet he _had_ loved her, the pure baby. That stung him. He could not forget it, though he mightown no fathership to the wanderer. 

Amos Ryck was a respectable man; he had the reputation of an honest, pious farmer to maintain. Moreover, he was a deacon in the church. Hisown life, stern in its purity, could brook no tenderness towardoffenders. His own child was as shut out from his forgiveness as hedeemed her to be from the forgiveness of his God. Yet you would haveseen, in one look at the man, that this blow with which he was smittenhad cleft his heart to its core. 

This was her birthday, --hers whose name had not passed his lips foryears. Do you think he had once forgotten it since its morning? Did notthe memories it brought crowd into every moment? Did they not fill thevery prayers in which he besought a sin-hating God to avenge him of allhis enemies?

So many times the child had sat there at his feet on this day, playingwith some birthday toy, --he always managed to find her something, a dollor a picture-book; she used to come up to thank him, pushing back hercurls, her little red lips put up for a kiss. He was very proud ofher, --he and the mother. She was all they had, --the only one. He used tocall her "God's dear blessing, " softly, while his eyes grew dim; shehardly heard him for his breaking voice. 

She might have stood there and brought back all those dead birthdaynights, so did he live them over. But none could know it; for he did notspeak, and the frown knotted darkly on his forehead. Martha Ryck lookedup at last into her husband's face. 

"Amos, if she _should_ ever come back!" He started, his eyes freezing. 

"She won't! She--"

Would he have said "she _shall_ not?" God only knew. 

"Martha, you talk nonsense! It's just like a woman. We've said enoughabout this. I suppose He who's cursed us has got his own reasons for it. We must bear it, and so must she. "

He stood up, stroking his beard nervously, his eyes wandering about theroom; he did not, or he could not, look at his wife. Muff, rousing fromhis slumbers, came up sleepily to be taken some notice of. She used tolove the dog, --the child; she gave him his name in a frolic one day; hewas always her playfellow; many a time they had come in and found herasleep with Muff's black, shaggy sides for a pillow, and her little pinkarms around his neck, her face warm and bright with some happy dream. 

Mr. Ryck had often thought he would sell the creature; but he never had. If he had been a woman, he would have said he could not. Being a man, heargued that Muff was a good watch-dog, and worth keeping. 

"Always in the way, Muff!" he muttered, looking at the patient blackhead rubbed against his knee. He was angry with the dog at that moment;the next he had repented; the brute had done no wrong. He stooped andpatted him. Muff returned to his dreams content. 

"Well, Martha, " he said, coming up to her uneasily, "you look tired. "

"Tired? No, I was only thinking, Amos. "

The pallor of her face, its timid eyes and patient mouth, the wholecrushed look of the woman, struck him freshly. He stooped and kissed herforehead, the sharp lines of his face relaxing a little. 

"I didn't mean to be hard on you, Martha; we both have enough to bearwithout that, but it's best not to talk of what can't be helped, --yousee. "

"Yes. "

"Don't think anything more about the day; it's not--it's not really goodfor you; you must cheer up, little woman. "

"Yes, Amos. "

Perhaps his unusual tenderness gave her courage; she stood up, puttingboth arms around his neck. 

"If you'd only try to love her a little, after all, my husband! He wouldknow it; He might save her for it. "

Amos Ryck choked, coughed, and said it was time for prayers. He tookdown the old Bible in which his child's baby-fingers used to trace theirfirst lessons after his own, and read, not of her who loved much and wasforgiven, but one of the imprecatory Psalms. 

When Mrs. Ryck was sure that her husband was asleep that night, she rosesoftly from her bed, unlocked, with noiseless key, one of her bureaudrawers, took something from it, and then felt her way down the darkstairs into the kitchen. 

She drew a chair up to the fire, wrapped her shawl closely about her, and untied, with trembling fingers, the knots of a soft silkenhandkerchief in which her treasures were folded. 

Some baby dresses of purest white; a child's little pink apron; a pairof tiny shoes, worn through by pattering feet; and a toy or two allbroken, as some impatient little fingers had left them; she was such acareless baby! Yet they never could scold her, she always affected suchpretty surprises, and wide blue-eyed penitence: a bit of a queen she wasat the farm. 

Was it not most kindly ordered by the Infinite Tenderness which pitiethits sorrowing ones, that into her still hours her child should come sooften only as a child, speaking pure things only, touching her mother solike a restful hand, and stealing into a prayer?

For where was ever grief like this one? Beside this sorrow, death wasbut a joy. If she might have closed her child's baby-eyes, and seen thelips which had not uttered their first "Mother!" stilled, and laid heraway under the daisies, she would have sat there alone that night, andthanked Him who had given and taken away. 

But _this_, --a wanderer upon the face of the earth, --a mark, deeperseared than the mark of Cain, upon the face which she had fondled andkissed within her arms; the soul to which she had given life, accursedof God and man, --to measure this, there is no speech nor language. 

Martha Ryck rose at last, took off the covers of the stove, and made afresh blaze which brightened all the room, and shot its glow far intothe street. She went to the window to push the curtain carefully aside, stood a moment looking out into the night, stole softly to the door, unlocked it, then went upstairs to bed. 

The wind, rising suddenly that night, struck sharply through the city. It had been cold enough before, but the threatened storm foreboded thatit would be worse yet before morning. The people crowded in a warm andbrilliant church cast wandering glances from the preacher to the paintedwindows, beyond which the night lay darkly, thought of the ride home inclose, cushioned carriages, and shivered. 

So did a woman outside, stopping just by the door, and looking in at thehushed and sacred shelter. Such a temperature was not the best medicinefor that cough of hers. She had just crawled out of the garret, whereshe had lain sick, very sick, for weeks. 

Passing the door of the Temple which reared its massive front andglittering windows out of the darkness of the street, her ear was caughtby the faint, muffled sound of some anthem the choir were singing. Shedrew the hood of her cloak over her face, turned into the shadow of thesteps, and, standing so, listened. Why, she hardly knew. Perhaps it wasthe mere entreaty of the music, for her dulled ear had never grown deafto it; or perhaps a memory, flitting as a shadow, of other places andother times, in which the hymns of God's church had not been strange toher. She caught the words at last, brokenly. They were of some one whowas wounded. Wounded! she held her breath, listening curiously. The windshrieking past drowned the rest; only the swelling of the organ murmuredabove it. She stole up the granite steps just within the entrance. Noone was there to see her, and she went on tiptoe to the muffled door, putting her ear to it, her hair falling over her face. It was someplaintive minor air they were hymning, as sad as a dying wail, and assweet as a mother's lullaby. 

"But He was wounded; He was wounded for our transgression; He wasbruised for our iniquities. "

Then, growing slower and more faint, a single voice took up the strain, mournfully but clearly, with a hush in it as if one sang on Calvary. 

"Yet we hid, as it were, our faces from Him. He was despised, and weesteemed him not. "

Well; He only knows what it spoke to the woman, who listened with herguilty face hidden in her hair; how it drew her like a call to join thethrong that worshipped him. 

"I'd like to hear the rest, " she muttered to herself. "I wonder what itis about. "

A child came down from the gallery just then, a ragged boy, who, likeherself, had wandered in from the street. 

"Hilloa, Meg!" he said, laughing, "_you_ going to meeting? That's a goodjoke!" If she had heard him, she would have turned away. But her handwas on the latch; the door had swung upon its noiseless hinges; thepealing organ drowned his voice. She went in and sat down in an emptyslip close by the door, looking about her for the moment in a sort ofchildish wonder. The church was a blaze of light and color. Oneperceived a mist of gayly dressed people, a soft flutter of fans, andfaint, sweet perfumes below; the velvet-cushioned pulpit, and pale, scholarly outlines of the preacher's face above; the warmth ofrainbow-tinted glass; the wreathed and massive carving of oaken cornice;the glitter of gas-light from a thousand prisms, and the silence of thedome beyond. 

The brightness struck sharply against the woman sitting there alone. Herface seemed to grow grayer and harder in it. The very hush of thatprincely sanctuary seemed broken by her polluted presence. True, shekept afar off; she did not so much as lift up her eyes to heaven; shehad but stolen in to hear the chanted words that were meant for theacceptance and the comfort of the pure, bright worshippers, --sinners, tobe sure, in their way; but then, Christ died for _them_. Thistabernacle, to which they had brought their purple and gold and scarlet, for his praise, was not meant for such as Meg, you know. 

But she had come into it, nevertheless. If He had called her there, shedid not know it. She only sat and listened to the chanting, forgettingwhat she was; forgetting to wonder if there were one of all thatreverent throng who would be willing to sit and worship beside her. 

The singing ended at last, and the pale preacher began his sermon. ButMeg did not care for that; she could not understand it. She croucheddown in the corner of the pew, her hood drawn far over her face, repeating to herself now and then, mechanically as it seemed, the wordsof the chant. 

"Wounded--for our transgressions; and bruised, "--muttering, after awhile, --"Yet we hid our faces. " Bruised and wounded! The sound of thewords attracted her; she said them over and over. She knew who He was. Many years ago she had heard of him; it was a great while since then;she had almost forgotten it. Was it true? And was he perhaps, --was therea little chance it meant, he was bruised for her, --for _her_? She beganto wonder dimly, still muttering the sorrowful words down in her corner, where no one could hear her. 

I wonder if He heard them. Do you think he did? For when the sermon wasended, and the choir sang again, --still of him, and how he called theheavy-laden, and how he kept his own rest for them, she said, --for wasshe not very weary and heavy-laden with her sins?--still crouching downin her corner, "That's me. I guess it is. I'll find out. "

She fixed her eyes upon the preacher, thinking, in her stunted, childishway, that he knew so much, so many things she did not understand, thatsurely he could tell her, --she should like to have it to think about;she would ask him. She rose instinctively with the audience to receivehis blessing, then waited in her hooded cloak, like some dark and evilthing, among the brilliant crowd. The door opening, as they began topass out by her, swept in such a chill of air as brought back a spasm ofcoughing. She stood quivering under it, her face livid with the pain. The crowd began to look at her curiously, to nod and whisper amongthemselves. 

The sexton stepped up nervously; he knew who she was. "Meg, you'd bettergo. What are you standing here for?"

She flung him a look out of her hard, defiant eyes; she made no answer. A child, clinging to her mother's hand, looked up as she went by, pityand fear in her great wondering eyes. "Mother, see that poor woman;she's hungry or cold!"

The little one put her hand over the slip, pulling at Meg's cloak, "What's the matter with you? Why don't you go home?"

"Bertha, child, are you crazy?" Her mother caught her quickly away. "Don't touch that woman!"

Meg heard it. 

Standing, a moment after, just at the edge of the aisle, a lady, clad invelvet, brushed against her, then gathered her costly garments with ahand ringed and dazzling with diamonds, shrinking as if she had touchedsome accursed thing, and sweeping by. 

Meg's eyes froze at that. This was the sanctuary, these the worshippersof Him who was bruised. His message could not be for her. It would be ofno use to find out about him; of no use to tell him how she loathedherself and her life; that she wanted to know about that Rest, and aboutthat heavy-laden one. His followers would not brook the very flutter ofher dress against their pure garments. They were like him; he could havenothing to say to such as she. 

She turned to go out. Through the open door she saw the night and thestorm. Within was the silent dome, and the organ-hymn still swelling upto it. 

It was still of the wounded that they sang. Meg listened, lingered, touched the preacher on the arm as he came by. 

"I want to ask you a question. "

He started at the sight of her, or more perhaps at the sharpness in hervoice. 

"Why, why, who are you?"

"I'm Meg. You don't know me. I ain't fit for your fine Christian peopleto touch; they won't let their little children speak to me. "

"Well?" he said, nervously, for she paused. 

"Well? You're a preacher. I want to know about Him they've been singingof, I came in to hear the singing. I like it. "

"I--I don't quite understand you, " began the minister. "You surely haveheard of Jesus Christ. "

"Yes, " her eyes softened, "somebody used to tell me; it was mother; welived in the country. I wasn't what I am now. I want to know if he canput me back again. What if I should tell him I was going to bedifferent? Would he hear me, do you suppose?"

Somehow the preacher's scholarly self-possession failed him. He felt illat ease, standing there with the woman's fixed black eyes upon him. 

"Why, yes; he always forgives a repentant sinner. "

"Repentant sinner. " She repeated the words musingly. "I don't understandall these things. I've forgotten most all about it. I want to know. Couldn't I come in some way with the children and be learnt 'em? Iwouldn't make any trouble. "

There was something almost like a child in her voice just then, almostas earnest and as pure. The preacher took out his handkerchief and wipedhis face; then he changed his hat awkwardly from hand to hand. 

"Why, why, really, we have no provision in our Sabbath school for caseslike this: we have been meaning to establish an institution of amissionary character, but the funds cannot be raised just yet. I amsorry; I don't know but--"

"It's no matter!"

Meg turned sharply away, her hands dropping lifelessly; she moved towardthe door. They were alone now in the church, they two. 

The minister's pale cheek flushed; he stepped after her. 

"Young woman!"

She stopped, her face turned from him. 

"I will send you to some of the city missionaries, or I will go with youto the Penitents' Retreat. I should like to help you. I--"

He would have exhorted her to reform as kindly as he knew how; he feltuncomfortable at letting her go so; he remembered just then who washedthe feet of his Master with her tears. But she would not listen. Sheturned from him, and out into the storm, some cry on her lips, --it mighthave been:--

"There ain't nobody to help me. I _was_ going to be better!"

She sank down on the snow outside, exhausted by the racking cough whichthe air had again brought on. 

The sexton found her there in the shadow, when he locked the churchdoors. 

"Meg! you here? What ails you?"

"_Dying_, I suppose!"

The sight of her touched the man, she lying there alone in the snow; helingered, hesitated, thought of his own warm home, looked at her again. If a friendly hand should save the creature, --he had heard of suchthings. Well? But how could he take her into his respectable home? Whatwould people say?--the sexton of the Temple! He had a little wife theretoo, pure as the snow upon the ground to-night. Could he bring themunder the same roof?

"Meg!" he said, speaking in his nervous way, though kindly, "you _will_die here. I'll call the police and let them take you where it's warmer. "

But she crawled to her feet again. 

"No you won't!"

She walked away as fast as she was able, till she found a still placedown by the water, where no one could see her. There she stood a momentirresolute, looked up through the storm as if searching for the sky, then sank upon her knees down in the silent shade of some timber. 

Perhaps she was half-frightened at the act, for she knelt so a momentwithout speaking. There she began to mutter: "Maybe He won't drive meoff; if they did, maybe he won't. I should just like to tell him, anyway!"

So she folded her hands, as she had folded them once at her mother'sknee. 

"O Lord! I'm tired of being _Meg_. I should like to be something else!"

Then she rose, crossed the bridge, and on past the thinning houses, walking feebly through the snow that drifted against her feet. 

She did not know why she was there, or where she was going. She repeatedsoftly to herself now and then the words uttered down in the shade ofthe timber, her brain dulled by the cold, faint, floating dreamsstealing into them. 

Meg! tired of being Meg! She wasn't always that. It was another name, apretty name she thought, with a childish smile, --Maggie. They alwayscall her that. She used to play about among the clover-blossoms andbuttercups then; the pure little children used to kiss her; nobodyhooted after her in the street, or drove her out of church, or left herall alone out in the snow, --_Maggie_!

Perhaps, too, some vague thought came to her of the mournful, unconscious prophecy of the name, as the touch of the sacred water uponher baby-brow had sealed it, --Magdalene. 

She stopped a moment, weakened by her toiling against the wind, threwoff her hood, the better to catch her laboring breath, and standing so, looked back at the city, its lights glimmering white and pale, throughthe falling snow. 

Her face was a piteous sight just then. Do you think the haughtiest ofthe pure, fair women in yonder treasured homes could have loathed her asshe loathed herself at that moment?

Yet it might have been a face as fair and pure as theirs; kisses ofmother and husband might have warmed those drawn and hueless lips; theymight have prayed their happy prayers, every night and morning, to God. It _might have been_. You would almost have thought he had meant itshould be so, if you had looked into her eyes sometimes, --perhaps whenshe was on her knees by the timber; or when she listened to the chant, crouching out of sight in the church. 

Well, it was only that it might have been. Life could hold no possibleblessed change for her, you know. Society had no place for it, thoughshe sought it carefully with tears. Who of all God's happy children thathe had kept from sin would have gone to her and said, "My sister, hislove holds room for you and me"; have touched her with her woman's hand, held out to her her woman's help, and blessed her with her woman'sprayers and tears?

Do you not think Meg knew the answer? Had she not learned it well, inseven wandering years? Had she not read it in every blast of this bitternight, out into which she had come to find a helper, when all the happyworld passed by her, on the other side?

She stood there, looking at the glittering of the city, then off intothe gloom where the path lay through the snow. Some struggle was in herface. 

"Home! home and mother! She don't want me, --nobody wants me. I'd bettergo back. "

The storm was beating upon her. But, looking from the city to thedrifted path, and back from the lonely path to the lighted city, she didnot stir. 

"I should like to see it, just to look in the window, a little, --itwouldn't hurt 'em any. Nobody'd know. "

She turned, walking slowly where the snow lay pure and untrodden. On, out of sight of the town, where the fields were still; thinking only asshe went, that nobody would know, --nobody would know. 

She would see the old home out in the dark; she could even say good-byto it quite aloud, and they wouldn't hear her, or come and drive heraway. And then--

She looked around where the great shadows lay upon the fields, felt theweakening of her limbs, her failing breath, and smiled. Not Meg's smile;a very quiet smile, with a little quiver in it. She would find a stillplace under the trees somewhere; the snow would cover her quite out ofsight before morning, --the pure, white snow. She would be only Maggiethen. 

The road, like some familiar dream, wound at last into the village. Downthe street where her childish feet had pattered in their playing, by theold town pump, where, coming home from school, she used to drink thecool, clear water on summer noons, she passed, --a silent shadow. Shemight have been the ghost of some dead life, so moveless was her face. She stopped at last, looking about her. 

"Where? I most forget. "

Turning out from the road, she found a brook half hidden under thebranches of a dripping tree, --frozen now; only a black glare of ice, where she pushed away the snow with her foot. It might have been astill, green place in summer, with banks of moss, and birds singingoverhead. Some faint color flushed all her face; she did not hear theicicles dropping from the lonely tree. 

"Yes, "--she began to talk softly to herself, --"this is it. The firsttime I ever saw him, he stood over there under the tree. Let me see;wasn't I crossing the brook? Yes, I was crossing the brook; on thestones. I had a pink dress. I looked in the glass when I went home, "brushing her soft hair out of her eyes. "Did I look pretty? I can'tremember. It's a great while ago. "

She came back into the street after that, languidly, for the snow laydeeper. The wind, too, had chilled her more than she knew. The sleet wasfrozen upon her mute, white face. She tried to draw her cloak moreclosely about her, but her hands refused to hold it. She looked at themcuriously. 

"Numb? How much farther, I wonder?"

It was not long before she came to it. The house stood up silently inthe night. A single light glimmered far out upon the garden. Her eyecaught it eagerly. She followed it down, across the orchard, and thelittle plats where the flowers used to be so bright all summer long. Shehad not forgotten them. She used to go out in the morning and pick themfor her mother, --a whole apronful, purple, and pink, and white, withdewdrops on them. She was fit to touch them then. Her mother used tosmile when she brought them in. Her mother! Nobody ever smiled so since. Did she know it? Did she ever wonder what had become of her, --the littlegirl who used to kiss her? Did she ever want to see her? Sometimes, when she prayed up in the old bedroom, did she remember her daughterwho had sinned, or guess that she was tired of it all, and how no one inall the wide world would help her?

She was sleeping there now. And the father. She was afraid to see him;he would send her away, if he knew she had come out in the snow to lookat the old home. She wondered if her mother would. 

She opened the gate, and went in. The house was very still. So was theyard, and the gleam of light that lay golden on the snow. The numbnessof her body began to steal over her brain. She thought at moments, asshe crawled up the path upon her hands and knees, --for she could nolonger walk, --that she was dreaming some pleasant dream; that the doorwould open, and her mother come out to meet her. Attracted like a childby the broad belt of light, she followed it over and through a pilingdrift. It led her to the window where the curtain was pushed aside. Shemanaged to reach the blind, and so stand up a moment, clinging to it, looking in, the glow from the fire sharp on her face. Then she sank downupon the snow by the door. 

Lying so, her face turned up against it, her stiffened lips kissing thevery dumb, unanswering wood, a thought came to her. She remembered theday. For seven long years she had not thought of it. 

A spasm crossed her face, her hands falling clinched. Who was it of whomit was written, that better were it for that man if he had never beenborn? Of Magdalene, more vile than Judas, what should be said?

Yet it was hard, I think, to fall so upon the very threshold, --so nearthe quiet, peaceful room, with the warmth, and light, and rest; to stayall night in the storm, with eyes turned to that dead, pitiless sky, without one look into her mother's face, without one kiss, or gentletouch, or blessing, and die so, looking up! No one to hold her hand andlook into her eyes, and hear her say she was sorry, --sorry for it all!That they should find her there in the morning, when her poor, dead facecould not see if she were forgiven!

"I should like to go in, " sobbing, with the first tears of many yearsupon her cheek, --weak, pitiful tears, like a child's, --"just in out ofthe cold!"

Some sudden strength fell on her after that. She reached up, fumblingfor the latch. It opened at her first touch; the door swung wide intothe silent house. 

She crawled in then, into the kitchen where the fire was, and therocking-chair; the plants in the window, and the faded cricket upon thehearth; the dog, too, roused from his nap behind the stove. He began togrowl at her, his eyes on fire. 

"Muff!" she smiled weakly, stretching out her hand. He did not knowher, --he was fierce with strangers. "Muff! don't you know me? I'mMaggie; there, there, Muff, good fellow!"

She crept up to him fearlessly, putting both her arms about his neck, in a way she had of soothing him when she was his playfellow. Thecreature's low growl died away. He submitted to her touch, doubtfully atfirst, then he crouched on the floor beside her, wagging his tail, wetting her face with his huge tongue. 

"Muff, _you_ know me, you old fellow! I'm sorry, Muff, I am, --I wish wecould go out and play together again. I'm very tired, Muff. "

She laid her head upon the dog, just as she used to long ago, creepingup near the fire. A smile broke all over her face, at Muff's short, happy bark. 

"_He_ don't turn me off; he don't know; he thinks I'm nobody butMaggie. "

How long she lay so, she did not know. It might have been minutes, itmight have been hours; her eyes wandering all about the room, growingbrighter too, and clearer. They would know now that she had come back;that she wanted to see them; that she had crawled into the old room todie; that Muff had not forgotten her. Perhaps, _perhaps_ they would lookat her not unkindly, and cry over her just a little, for the sake of thechild they used to love. 

Martha Ryck, coming in at last, found her with her long hair fallingover her face, her arms still about the dog, lying there in thefirelight. 

The woman's eyelids fluttered for an instant, her lips moving dryly; butshe made no sound. She came up, knelt upon the floor, pushed Muffgently away, and took her child's head upon her lap. 

"Maggie!"

She opened her eyes and looked up. 

"Mother's glad to see you, Maggie. "

The girl tried to smile, her face all quivering. 

"Mother, I--I wanted you. I thought I wasn't fit. "

Her mother stooped and kissed her lips, --the polluted, purple lips, thattrembled so. 

"I thought you would come back to me, my daughter. I've watched for youa great while. "

She smiled at that, pushing away her falling hair. 

"Mother, I'm so sorry. "

"Yes, Maggie. "

"And oh!" she threw out her arms; "O, I'm so tired, I'm so tired!"

Her mother raised her, laying her head upon her shoulder. 

"Mother'll rest you, Maggie, " soothing her, as if she sang again herfirst lullaby, when she came to her, the little pure baby, --her onlyone. 

"Mother, " once more, "the door was unlocked. "

"It has been unlocked every night for seven years, my child. "

She closed her eyes after that, some stupor creeping over her, herfeatures in the firelight softening and melting, with the old child-lookcoming into them. Looking up at last, she saw another face bending overher, a face in which grief had worn stern lines; there were tears inthe eyes, and some recent struggle quivering out of it. 

"Father, I didn't mean to come in, --I didn't really; but I was so cold. Don't send me off, father! I couldn't walk so far, --I shall be out ofyour way in a little while, --the cough--"

"_I_ send you away, Maggie? I--I might have done it once; God forgiveme! He sent you back, my daughter, --I thank him. "

A darkness swept over both faces then; she did not even hear Muff'swhining cry at her ear. 

"Mother, " at last, the light of the room coming back, "there's Somebodywho was wounded. I guess I'm going to find him. Will he forget it all?"

"All, Maggie. "

For what did He tell the sin-laden woman who came to him once, and darednot look into his face? Was ever soul so foul and crimson-stained thathe could not make it pure and white? Does he not linger till his locksare wet with the dews of night, to listen for the first, faint call ofany wanderer crying to him in the dark?

So He came to Maggie. So he called her by her name, --Magdalene, mostprecious to him; whom he had bought with a great price; for whom, withgroanings that cannot be uttered, he had pleaded with his Father:Magdalene, chosen from all eternity, to be graven in the hollow of hishand, to stand near to him before the throne, to look with fearlesseyes into his face, to touch him with her happy tears among his sinlessones forever. 

And think you that _then_, any should scorn the woman whom the high andlofty One, beholding, did thus love? Who could lay anything to thecharge of his elect?

Perhaps he told her all this, in the pauses of the storm, for somethingin her face transfigured it. 

"Mother, it's all over now. I think I shall be your little girl again. "

And so, with a smile, she went to Him. The light flashed broader andbrighter about the room, and on the dead face there, --never Meg's again. A strong man, bowed over it, was weeping. Muff moaned out his brutesorrow where the still hand touched him. 

But Martha Ryck, kneeling down beside her only child, gave thanks toGod. 

What Was the Matter?

I could not have been more than seven or eight years old, when ithappened; but it might have been yesterday. Among all other childishmemories, it stands alone. To this very day it brings with it the old, utter sinking of the heart, and the old, dull sense of mystery. 

To read what I have to say, you should have known my mother. Tounderstand it, you should understand her. But that is quite impossiblenow, for there is a quiet spot over the hill, and past the church, andbeside the little brook where the crimsoned mosses grow thick and wetand cool, from which I cannot call her. It is all I have left of hernow. But after all, it is not of her that you will chiefly care to hear. My object is simply to acquaint you with a few facts, which, thoughinterwoven with the events of her life, are quite independent of it asobjects of interest. It is, I know, only my own heart that makes thesepages a memorial, --but, you see, I cannot help it. 

Yet, I confess, no glamour of any earthly love has ever entirely dazzledme, --not even hers. Of imperfections, of mistakes, of sins, I knew shewas guilty. I know it now; even with the sanctity of those crimsonedmosses, and the hush of the rest beneath, so close to my heart, I cannotforget them. Yet somehow--I do not know how--the imperfections, themistakes, the very sins, bring her nearer to me as the years slip by, and make her dearer. 

My mother was what we call an aristocrat. I do not like the term, as theterm is used. I am sure she does not now; but I have no other word. Shewas a royal-looking woman, and she had the blood of princes in herveins. Generations back, --how we children used to reckon the thingover!--she was cradled in a throne. A miserable race, to be sure, theywere, --the Stuarts; and the most devout genealogist might deem itdubious honor to own them for great-grand-fathers by innumerable degreesremoved. So she used to tell us, over and over, as a damper on ourchildish vanity, looking such a very queen as she spoke, in every playof feature, and every motion of her hand, that it was the old story ofpreachers who did not practise. The very baby was proud of her. Thebeauty of a face, and the elegant repose of a manner, are influences byno means more unfelt at three years than at thirty. 

As insanity will hide itself away, and lie sleeping, and die out, --whileold men are gathered to their fathers scathless, and young men follow intheir footsteps safe and free, --and start into life, and claim its ownwhen children's children have forgotten it; as a single trait of asingle scholar in a race of clods will bury itself in day-laborers andcriminals, unto the third and fourth generation, and spring then, like acreation from a chaos, into statesmen and poets and sculptors;--so, Ihave sometimes fancied, the better and truer nature of voluptuaries andtyrants was sifted down through the years, and purified in our littleNew England home, and the essential autocracy of monarchical bloodrefined and ennobled, in my mother, into royalty. 

A broad and liberal culture had moulded her; she knew its worth, inevery fibre of her heart; scholarly parents had blessed her with theirlegacies of scholarly mind and name. With the soul of an artist, shequivered under every grace and every defect; and the blessing of abeauty as rare as rich had been given to her. With every instinct of hernature recoiling from the very shadow of crimes the world winks at, thefamily record had been stainless for a generation. God had indeedblessed her; but the very blessing was a temptation. 

I knew, before she left me, what she might have been, but for themerciful and tender watch of Him who was despised and rejected of men. Iknow, for she told me, one still night when we were alone together, howshe sometimes shuddered at herself, and what those daily and hourlystruggles between her nature and her Christianity _meant_. 

I think we were as near to one another as mother and daughter can be, but yet as different. Since I have been talking in such lordly style ofthose miserable Jameses and Charleses, I will take the opportunity toconfess that I have inherited my father's thorough-goingdemocracy, --double measure, pressed down and running over. She not onlypardoned it, but I think she loved it in me, for his sake. 

It was about a year and a half, I think, after he died, that she sentfor Aunt Alice to come to Creston. "Your aunt loves me, " she said, whenshe told us in her quiet way, "and I am so lonely now. "

They had been the only children, and they loved each other, --how much, Iafterwards knew. And how much they love each other _now_, I like tothink, --quite freely and fully, and without shadow or doubt betweenthem, I dare to hope. 

A picture of Aunt Alice always hung in mother's room. It was taken downyears ago. I never asked her where she put it. I remember it, though, quite well; for mother's sake I am glad I do. For it was a pleasant faceto look upon, and a young, pure, happy face, --beautiful too, though withnone of the regal beauty crowned by my mother's massive hair, andpencilled brows. It was a timid, girlish face, with reverent eyes, andripe, tremulous lips, --weak lips, as I remember them. From babyhood, Ifelt a want in the face. I had, of course, no capacity to define it; itwas represented to me only by the fact that it differed from mymother's. 

She was teaching school out West when mother sent for her. I saw theletter. It was just like my mother: "Alice, I need you. You and I oughtto have but one home now. Will you come?"

I saw, too, a bit of postscript to the answer: "I'm not fit that youshould love me so, Marie. "

And how mother laughed at it!

When it was all settled, and the waiting weeks became at last a singleday, I hardly knew my mother. She was so full of fitful moods, andlittle fantastic jokes! such a flush on her cheeks too, as she ran tothe window every five minutes, like a child! I remember how we went allover the house together, she and I, to see that everything looked neat, and bright, and welcome. And how we lingered in the guest-room, to putthe little finishing touches to its stillness, and coolness, andcoseyness. The best spread was on the bed, and the white folds smoothedas only mother's fingers could smooth them; the curtain freshly washed, and looped with its crimson cord; the blinds drawn, cool and green; thelate afternoon sunlight slanting through, in flecks upon the floor. There were flowers, too, upon the table. I remember they were allwhite, --lilies of the valley, I think; and the vase of Parian marble, itself a solitary lily, unfolding stainless leaves. Over the mantle shehad hung the finest picture in the house, --an "Ecce Homo, " and anexquisite engraving. It used to hang in grandmother's room in the oldhouse. We children wondered a little that she took it upstairs. 

"I want your aunt to feel at home, and see some things, " she said. "Iwish I could think of something more to make it pleasant in here. "

Just as we left the room she turned and looked into it. "Pleasant, isn'tit? I am so glad, Sarah, " her eyes dimming a little. "She's a very dearsister to me. "

She stepped in again to raise a stem of the lilies that had fallen fromthe vase and lay like wax upon the table, then she shut the door andcame away. 

That door was shut just so for years; the lonely bars of sunlightflecked the solitude of the room, and the lilies faded on the table. Wechildren passed it with hushed footfall, and shrank from it at twilight, as from a room that held the dead. But into it we never went. 

Mother was tired out that afternoon; for she had been on her feet allday, busied in her loving cares to make our simple home as pleasant andas welcome as home could be. But yet she stopped to dress us in ourSunday clothes, --and it was no sinecure to dress three persistentlyundressable children; Winthrop was a host in himself. "Auntie must seeus look our prettiest, " she said. 

She was a sight for an artist when she came down. She had taken off herwidow's cap and coiled her heavy hair low in her neck, and she alwayslooked like a queen in that lustreless black silk. I do not know whythese little things should have made such an impression on me then. They are priceless to me now. I remember how she looked, framed there inthe doorway, while we were watching for the coach, --the late lightebbing in golden tides over the grass at her feet, and touching her facenow and then through the branches of trees, her head bent a little, witheager, parted lips, and the girlish color on her cheeks, her handshading her eyes as they strained for a sight of the lumbering coach. She must have been a magnificent woman when she was young, --not unlike, I have heard it said, to that far-off ancestress whose name she bore, and whose sorrowful story has made her sorrowful beauty immortal. Somewhere abroad there is a reclining statue of Queen Mary, to which, when my mother stood beside it, her resemblance was so strong that theby-standers clustered about her, whispering curiously. "Ah, mon Dieu!"said a little Frenchman aloud, "c'est une résurrection. "

We must have tried her that afternoon, Clara and Winthrop and I; for thespirit of her own excitement had made us completely wild. Winthrop'sscream of delight, when, stationed on the gate-post, he caught the firstsight of the old yellow coach, might have been heard a quarter of amile. 

"Coming?" said mother, nervously, and stepped out to the gate, full inthe sunlight that crowned her like royal gold. 

The coach lumbered on, and rattled up, and passed. 

"Why, she hasn't come!" All the eager color died out of her face. "I amso disappointed!"--speaking like a troubled child, and turning slowlyinto the house. 

Then, after a while, she drew me aside from the others, --I was theoldest, and she was used to make a sort of confidence between us, instinctively, as it seemed, and often quite forgetting how very few myyears were. "Sarah, I don't understand. You think she might have lostthe train? But Alice is so punctual. Alice never lost a train. And shesaid she would come. " And then, a while after, "I _don't_ understand. "

It was not like my mother to worry. The next day the coach lumbered upand rattled past, and did not stop, --and the next, and the next. 

"We shall have a letter, " mother said, her eyes saddening everyafternoon. But we had no letter. And another day went by, and another. 

"She is sick, " we said; and mother wrote to her, and watched for thelumbering coach, and grew silent day by day. But to the letter there wasno answer. 

Ten days passed. Mother came to me one afternoon to ask for her pen, which I had borrowed. Something in her face troubled me vaguely. 

"What are you going to do, mother?"

"Write to your aunt's boarding-place. I can't bear this any longer. " Shespoke sharply. She had already grown unlike herself. 

She wrote, and asked for an answer by return of mail. 

It was on a Wednesday, I remember, that we looked for it. I came homeearly from school. Mother was sewing at the parlor window, her eyeswandering from her work, up the road. It was an ugly day. It had raineddrearily from eight o'clock till two, and closed in suffocating mist, creeping and dense and chill. It gave me a childish fancy of long-closedtombs and low-land graveyards, as I walked home in it. 

I tried to keep the younger children quiet when we went in, mother wasso nervous. As the early, uncanny twilight fell, we grouped around hertimidly. A dull sense of awe and mystery clung to the night, and clungto her watching face, and clung even then to that closed room upstairswhere the lilies were fading. 

Mother sat leaning her head upon her hand, the outline of her face dimin the dusk against the falling curtain. She was sitting so when weheard the first rumble of the distant coach-wheels. At the sound, shefolded her hands in her lap and stirred a little, rose slowly from herchair, and sat down again. 

"Sarah. "

I crept up to her. At the near sight of her face, I was so frightened Icould have cried. 

"Sarah, you may go out and get the letter. I--I can't. "

I went slowly out at the door and down the walk. At the gate I lookedback. The outline of her face was there against the window-pane, whitein the gathering gloom. 

It seems to me that my older and less sensitive years have never knownsuch a night. The world was stifling in a deluge of gray, cold mists, unstirred by a breath of air. A robin with feathers all ruffled, andhead hidden, sat on the gate-post, and chirped a little mournful chirp, like a creature dying in a vacuum. The very daisy that nodded anddrooped in the grass at my feet seemed to be gasping for breath. Theneighbor's house, not forty paces across the street, was invisible. Iremember the sensation it gave me, as I struggled to find its outlines, of a world washed out, like the figures I washed out on my slate. As Itrudged, half frightened, into the road, and the fog closed about me, itseemed to my childish superstition like a horde of long-imprisonedghosts let loose, and angry. The distant sound of the coach, which Icould not see, added to the fancy. 

The coach turned the corner presently. On a clear day I could see thebrass buttons on the driver's coat at that distance. There was nothingvisible now of the whole dark structure but the two lamps in front, likethe eyes of some evil thing, glaring and defiant, borne with swiftmotion down upon me by a power utterly unseen, --it had a curious effect. Even at this time, I confess I do not like to see a lighted carriagedriven through a fog. 

I summoned all my little courage, and piped out the driver's name, standing there in the road. 

He reined up his horses with a shout, --he had nearly driven over me. After some searching, he discovered the small object cowering down inthe mist, handed me a letter, with a muttered oath at being interceptedon such a night, and lumbered on and out of sight in three rods. 

I went slowly into the house. Mother had lighted a lamp, and stood atthe parlor door. She did not come into the hall to meet me. 

She took the letter and went to the light, holding it with the sealunbroken. She might have stood so two minutes. 

"Why don't you read, mamma?" spoke up Winthrop. I hushed him. 

She opened it then, read it, laid it down upon the table, and went outof the room without a word. I had not seen her face. We heard her goupstairs and shut the door. 

She had left the letter open there before us. After a little awedsilence, Clara broke out into sobs. I went up and read the few andsimple lines. 

_Aunt Alice had left for Creston on the appointed day_. 

Mother spent that night in the closed room where the lilies had droopedand died. Clara and I heard her pacing the floor till we cried ourselvesto sleep. When we woke in the morning, she was pacing it still. 

Weeks wore into months, and the months became many years. More thanthat we never knew. Some inquiry revealed the fact, after a while, thata slight accident had occurred, upon the Erie Railroad, to the trainwhich she should have taken. There was some disabling, but no deaths, the conductor had supposed. The car had fallen into the water. She mightnot have been missed when the half-drowned passengers were all drawnout. 

So mother added a little crape to her widow's weeds, the key of theclosed room lay henceforth in her drawer, and all things went on asbefore. To her children my mother was never gloomy, --it was not her way. No shadow of household affliction was placed like a skeleton confrontingour uncomprehending joy. Of what those weeks and months and years wereto her--a widow, and quite uncomforted in their dark places by any humanlove--she gave no sign. We thought her a shade paler, perhaps. We foundher often alone with her little Bible. Sometimes, on the Sabbath, wemissed her, and knew that she had gone into that closed room. But shewas just as tender with us in our little faults and sorrows, as merrywith us in our plays, as eager in our gayest plans, as she had alwaysbeen. As she had always been, --our mother. 

And so the years slipped from her and from us. Winthrop went intobusiness in Boston; he never took to his books, and mother was too wiseto _push_ him through college; but I think she was disappointed. He washer only boy, and she would have chosen for him the profession of hisfather and grandfather. Clara and I graduated in our white dresses andblue ribbons, like other girls, and came home to mother, crochet-work, and Tennyson. Just about here is the proper place to begin my story. 

I mean that about here our old and long-tried cook, Bathsheba, who hadbeen an heirloom in the family, suddenly fell in love with the oldersexton, who had rung the passing-bell for every soul who died in thevillage for forty years, and took it into her head to marry him, anddesert our kitchen for his little brown house under the hill. 

So it came about that we hunted the township for a handmaiden; and italso came about that our inquiring steps led us to the poor-house. Astout, not over-brilliant-looking girl, about twelve years of age, wasto be had for her board and clothes, and such schooling as we could giveher, --in country fashion to be "bound out" till she should be eighteen. The economy of the arrangement decided in her favor; for, in spite ofour grand descent and grander notions, we were poor enough, after fatherdied, and the education of three children had made no small gap in ourlittle principal, and she came. 

Her name was a singular one, --Selphar. It always savored too nearly ofbrimstone to please me. I used to call her Sel, "for short. " She was agood, sensible, uninteresting-looking girl, with broad face, largefeatures, and limp, tow-colored curls. They used to hang straight downabout her eyes, and were never otherwise than perfectly smooth. Sheproved to be of good temper, which is worth quite as much as brains in aservant, as honest as the daylight, dull enough at her books, but agood, plodding worker, if you marked out every step of the way for herbeforehand. I do not think she would ever have discovered the laws ofgravitation; but she might have jumped off a precipice to prove them, ifshe had been bidden. 

Until she was seventeen, she was precisely like any other rather stupidgirl; never given to novel-reading or fancies; never, frightened by thedark or ghost-stories; proving herself warmly attached to us, after awhile, and rousing in us, in return, the kindly interest naturally feltfor a faithful servant; but she was not in any respect _un_common, --quite far from it, --except in the circumstance that she never told afalse-hood. 

At seventeen she had a violent attack of diphtheria, and her life hungby a thread. Mother was as tender and unwearying in her care of her asthe girl's own mother might have been. 

From that time, I believe, Sel was immovable in her faith in hermistress's divinity. Under such nursing as she had, she slowlyrecovered, but her old, stolid strength never came back to her. Severeheadaches became of frequent occurrence. Her stout, muscular arms grewweak. As weeks went on, it became evident in many ways that, though thediphtheria itself was quite out of her system, it had left herthoroughly diseased. Strange fits of silence came over her; hervolubility had been the greatest objection we had to her hitherto. Herface began to wear a troubled look. She was often found in places whereshe had stolen away to be alone. 

One morning she slept late in her little garret-chamber, and we did notcall her. The girl had gone upstairs the night before crying with thepain in her temples, and mother, who was always thoughtful of herservants, said it was a pity to wake her, and, as there were only threeof us, we might get our own breakfast for once. While we were at worktogether in the kitchen, Clara heard her kitten mewing out in the snow, and went to the door to let her in. The creature, possessed by somesudden frolic, darted away behind the well-curb. Clara was always a bitof a romp, and, with never a thought of her daintily slippered feet, sheflung her trailing dress over one arm and was off over the three-inchsnow. The cat led her a brisk chase, and she came in flushed andpanting, and pretty, her little feet drenched, and the tip of a Maltesetail just visible above a great bundle she had made of her apron. 

"Why!" said mother, "you have lost your ear-ring. "

Clara dropped the kitten with unceremonious haste on the floor, felt ofher little pink ear, shook her apron, and the corners of her mouth wentdown into her dimpled chin. 

"They're the ones Winthrop sent, of all things in the world!"

"You'd better put on your rubbers, and have a hunt out-doors, " saidmother. 

We hunted out-doors, --on the steps, on the well-boards, in thewood-shed, in the snow; Clara looked down the well till her nose andfingers were blue, but the ear-ring was not to be found. We huntedin-doors, under the stove and the chairs and the table, in everypossible and impossible nook, cranny, and crevice, but gave up thesearch in despair. It was a pretty trinket, --a leaf of delicatelywrought gold, with a pearl dew-drop on it, --very becoming to Clara, andthe first present Winthrop had sent her from his earnings. If she hadbeen a little younger she would have cried. She came very near it as itwas, I suspect, for when she went after the plates she stayed in thecupboard long enough to set two tables. 

When we were half through breakfast, Selphar came down, blushing, andfrightened half out of her wits, her apologies tumbling over each otherwith such skill as to render each one unintelligible, and evidentlyundecided in her own mind whether she was to be hung or burnt at thestake. 

"It's no matter at all, " said mother, kindly; "I knew you felt sick lastnight. I should have called you if I had needed you. "

Having set the girl at her ease, as only she could do, she went on withher breakfast, and we forgot all about her. She stayed, however, in theroom to wait on the table. It was afterwards remembered that she had notbeen out of our sight since she came down the garret-stairs. Also, thather room looked out upon the opposite side of the house from that onwhich the well-curb stood. 

"Why, look at Sel!" said Clara, suddenly, "she has her eyes shut. "

The girl was just passing the toast. Mother spoke to her. "Selphar, whatis the matter?"

"I don't know. "

"Why don't you open your eyes?"

"I can't. "

"Hand the salt to Miss Sarah. "

She took it up and brought it round the table to me, with perfectprecision. 

"Sel, how you act!" said Clara, petulantly. "Of course you saw. "

"Yes'm, I saw, " said the girl in a puzzled way, "but my eyes are shut, Miss Clara. "

"Tight?"

"Tight. "

Whatever this freak meant, we thought best to take no notice of it. Mymother told her, somewhat gravely, that she might sit down until she waswanted, and we returned to our conversation about the ear-ring. 

"Why!" said Sel, with a little jump, "I see your ear-ring. MissClara, --the one with a white drop on the leaf. It's out by the well. "

The girl was sitting with her back to the window, her eyes, to allappearance, tightly closed. 

"It's on the right-hand side, under the snow, between the well and thewood-pile. Why, don't you see?"

Clara began to look frightened, mother displeased. 

"Selphar, " she said, "this is nonsense. It is impossible for you to seethrough the walls of two rooms and a wood-shed. "

"May I go and get it?" said the girl, quietly. 

"Sel, " said Clara, "on your word and honor, are your eyes shut_perfectly_ tight?"

"If they ain't, Miss Clara, then they never was. "

Sel never told a lie. We looked at each other, and let her go. Ifollowed her out and kept my eyes on her closed lids. She did not onceraise them; nor did they tremble, as lids will tremble, if onlypartially closed. 

She walked without the slightest hesitation directly to the well-curb, to the spot which she had mentioned, stooped down, and brushed away thethree-inch fall of snow. The ear-ring lay there, where it had sunk infalling. She picked it up, carried it in, and gave it to Clara. 

That Clara had the thing on when she started after her kitten, therecould be no doubt. She and I both remembered it. That Sel, asleep onthe opposite side of the house, could not have seen it drop, was alsosettled. That she, with her eyes closed and her back to the window, hadseen through three walls and through three inches of snow, at a distanceof fifty feet, was an inference. 

"I don't believe it!" said my mother, "it's some nonsensical mistake. "Clara looked a little pale, and I laughed. 

We watched her carefully through the day. Her eyes remained tightlyclosed. She understood all that was said to her, answered correctly, butdid, not seem inclined to talk. She went about her work as usual, andperformed it without a mistake. It could not be seen that she groped atall with her hands to feel her way, as is the case with the blind. Onthe contrary, she touched everything with her usual decision. It wasimpossible to believe, without seeing them, that her eyes were closed. 

We tied a handkerchief tightly over them; see through it or below it shecould not, if she had tried. We then sent her into the parlor, withorders to bring from the book-case two Bibles which had been given asprizes to Clara and me at school, when we were children. The books wereof precisely the same size, color, and texture. Our names in giltletters were printed upon the binding. We followed her in, and watchedher narrowly. She went directly to the book-case, laid her hands uponthe books at once, and brought them to my mother. Mother changed themfrom hand to hand several times, and turned them with the gilt letteringdownwards upon her lap. 

"Now, Selphar, which is Miss Sarah's?"

The girl quietly took mine up. The experiment was repeated and variedagain and again. In every case the result was the same. She made nomistake. It was no guess-work. All this was done with the bandagetightly drawn about her eyes. _She did not see those letters with them_. 

That evening we were sitting quietly in the dining-room. Selphar sat alittle apart with her sewing, her eyes still closed. We kept her withus, and kept her in sight. The parlor, which was a long room, wasbetween us and the front of the house. The distance was so great that wehad often thought, if prowlers were to come around at night, howimpossible it would be to hear them. The curtains and shutters wereclosely drawn. Sel was sitting by the fire. Suddenly she turned pale, dropped her sewing, and sprang from her chair. 

"Robbers, robbers!" she cried. "Don't you see? they're getting in theeast parlor window! There's three of 'em, and a lantern. They've justopened the window, --hurry, hurry!"

"I believe the girl is insane, " said mother, decidedly. Nevertheless, she put out the light, opened the parlor door noiselessly, and went in. 

The east window was open. There was a quick vision of three men and adark lantern. Then Clara screamed, and it disappeared. We went to thewindow, and saw the men running down the street. The snow the nextmorning was found trodden down under the window, and their footprintswere traced out to the road. 

When we went back to the other room, Selphar was standing in the middleof it, a puzzled, frightened look on her face, her eyes wide open. 

"Selphar, " said my mother, a little suspiciously, "how did you know therobbers were there?"

"Robbers!" said the girl, aghast. 

She knew nothing of the robbers. She knew nothing of the ear-ring. Sheremembered nothing that had happened since she went up the garret-stairsto bed, the night before. And, as I said, the girl was as honest as thesunlight. When we told her what had happened, she burst into terrifiedtears. 

For some time after this there was no return of the "tantrums, " asSelphar had called the condition, whatever it was. I began to get upvague theories of a trance state. But mother said, "Nonsense!" and Clarawas too much frightened to reason at all about the matter. 

One Sunday morning Sel complained of a headache. There was service thatevening, and we all went to church. Mother let Sel take the empty seatin the carryall beside her. 

It was very dark when we started to come home. But Creston was a safeold Orthodox town, the roads were filled with returning church-goerslike ourselves, and mother drove like a man. A darker night I think Ihave never seen. Literally, we could not see a hand before our eyes. Wemet a carriage on a narrow road and the horses' heads touched, beforeeither driver had seen the other. 

Selphar had been quite silent during the drive. I leaned forward, lookedclosely into her face, and could dimly see through the darkness that hereyes were closed. 

"Why!" she said at last, "see those gloves!"

"Where?"

"Down in the ditch; we passed them before I spoke. I see them on ablackberry-bush; they've got little brass buttons on the wrist. "

Three rods past now, and we could not see our horse's head. 

"Selphar, " said my mother, quickly, "what _is_ the matter with you?"

"If you please, ma'am, I don't know, " replied the girl, hanging herhead. "May I get out and bring 'em to you?"

Prince was reined up, and Sel got out. She went so far back, that, though we strained our eyes to do it, we could not see her. In about twominutes she came up, a pair of gentleman's gloves in her hand. They wererolled together, were of cloth so black that on a bright night it wouldnever have been seen, and had small brass buttons at the wrist. 

Mother took them without a word. 

The story leaked out somehow, and spread all over town. It raised agreat hue and cry. Four or five antediluvian ladies declared at oncethat we were nothing more nor less than a family of "them spirituousmediums, " and seriously proposed to expel mother from theprayer-meeting. Masculine Creston did worse. It smiled a pitying smile, and pronounced the whole thing the fancy of "scared women-folks. " Icould endure with calmness any slander upon earth but that. I bore it anumber of weeks, till at last, driven by despair, I sent for Winthrop, and stated the case to him in a condition of suppressed fury. He verypolitely bit back an incredulous smile, and said he should be _very_happy to see her perform. The answer was somewhat dubious. I accepted itin silent suspicion. 

He came on a Saturday noon. That afternoon we attended _en masse_ one ofthose refined inquisitions commonly known as picnics, and Winthrop losthis pocket-knife. Selphar, of course, kept house at home. 

When we returned, Winthrop made some careless reference to his loss inher presence, and thought no more of it. About half an hour after, weobserved that she was washing the dishes with her eyes shut. Thecondition had not been upon her five minutes before she dropped thespoon suddenly into the water, and asked permission to go out to walk. She "saw Mr. Winthrop's knife somewhere under a stone, and wanted to getit. " It was fully two miles to the picnic grounds, and nearly dark. Winthrop followed the girl, unknown to her, and kept her in sight. Shewent rapidly, and without the slightest hesitation or search, to anout-of-the-way gully down by the pond, where Winthrop afterwardsremembered having gone to cut some willow-twigs for the girls, parted athick cluster of bushes, lifted a large, loose stone under which theknife had rolled, and picked it up. She returned it to Winthrop, quietly, and hurried away about her work to avoid being thanked. 

I observed that, after this incident, masculine Creston became morerespectful. 

Of several peculiarities in this development of the girl I made at thetime careful memoranda, and the exactness of these can be relied upon. 

1. She herself, so far from attempting to bring on these trance states, or taking any pride therein, was intensely troubled and mortified bythem, --would run out of the room, if she felt them coming on in thepresence of visitors. 

2. They were apt to be preceded by severe headaches, but came oftenwithout any warning. 

3. She never, in any instance, recalled anything that happened duringthe trance, after it was passed. 

4. She was powerfully and unpleasantly affected by electricity from abattery, or acting in milder forms. She was also unable at any time toput her hands and arms into hot water; the effect was to paralyze themat once. 

5. Space proved to be no impediment to her vision. She has been known tofollow the acts, words, and expressions of countenance of members of thefamily hundreds of miles away, with accuracy as was afterwards proved bycomparing notes as to time. 

6. The girl's eyes, after her trances became habitual, assumed, andalways retained, the most singular expression I ever saw on any face. They were oblong and narrow, and set back in her head like the eyes of asnake. They were not--smile if you will, O practical and incredulousreader! but they were not--eyes. The eyes of Elsie Venner are the onlyeyes I can think of as at all like them. The most horrible circumstanceabout them--a circumstance that always made me shudder, familiar as Iwas with it--was, that, though turned fully on you, _they never lookedat you_. Something behind them or out of them did the seeing, not they. 

7. She not only saw substance, but soul. She has repeatedly told me mythoughts when they were upon subjects to which she could not by anypossibility have had the slightest clew. 

8. We were never able to detect a shadow of deceit about her. 

9. The clairvoyance never failed in any instance to be correct, so faras we were able to trace it. 

As will be readily imagined, the girl became a useful member of thefamily. The lost valuables restored and the warnings against mischancesgiven by her quite balanced her incapacity for peculiar kinds of work. This incapacity, however, rather increased than diminished; and, together with her fickle health, which also grew more unsettled, causedus a great deal of care. The Creston physician--who was a keen man inhis way, for a country doctor--pronounced the case altogether undreamtof before in Horatio's philosophy, and kept constant notes of it. Someof these have, I believe, found their way into the medical journals. 

After a while there came, like a thief in the night, that which Isuppose was poor Selphar's one unconscious, golden mission in thisworld. It came on a quiet summer night, that ended a long trance of aweek's continuance. Mother had gone out into the kitchen to give anorder for breakfast. I heard a few eager words in Selphar's voice, andthen the door shut quickly, and it was an hour before it was opened. 

Then my mother came to me without a particle of color in lips or cheek, and drew me away alone, and told the secret to me. 

Selphar had seen Aunt Alice. 

We sat down and looked at one another. There was a singular, pinchedlook about my mother's mouth. 

"Sarah. "

"Yes. "

"She says"--and then she told me what she said. She had seen AliceStuart in a Western town, seven hundred miles away. Among the living, she desired to be counted of the dead. And that was all. 

My mother paced the room three times back and forth, her hands locked. 

"Sarah. " There was a chill in her voice--it had been such a gentlevoice!--that froze me. "Sarah, the girl is an impostor. "

"Mother!"

She paced the room once more, three times, back and forth. "At any rate, she is a poor, self-deluded creature. How _can_ she see, seven hundredmiles away, a dead woman who has been an angel all these years? Think!an _angel_, Sarah! So much better than I, and I--I loved--"

Before or since, I never heard my mother speak like that. She broke offsharply, and froze back into her chilling voice. 

"We will say nothing about this, if you please. I do not believe a wordof it. "

We said nothing about it but Selphar did. The delusion, if delusion itwere, clung to her, haunted her, pursued her, week after week. To ridher of it, or to silence her, was impossible. She added no new facts toher first statement, but insisted that the long-lost dead was yet alive, with a quiet pertinacity that it was simply impossible to ridicule, frighten, threaten, or cross-question out of her. Clara was sothoroughly alarmed that she would not have slept alone for anymortal--perhaps not for any immortal--considerations. Winthrop and Italked the matter over often and gravely when we were alone and in quietplaces. Mother's lips were sealed. From the day when Sel made the firstdisclosure, she was never heard once to refer to the matter. Aperceptible haughtiness crept into her manner towards the girl. She eventalked of dismissing her, but repented it, and melted into momentarygentleness. I could have cried over her that night. I was beginning tounderstand what a pitiful struggle her life had become, and how aloneshe must be in it. She _would_ not believe--she knew not what. She couldnot doubt the girl. And with the conflict even her children could notintermeddle. 

To understand the crisis into which she was brought, the reader mustbear in mind our long habit of belief, not only in Selphar's personalhonesty, but in the infallibility of her mysterious power. Indeed, ithad almost ceased to be mysterious to us, from daily familiarity. We hadcome to regard it as the curious working of physical disease, had takenits results as a matter of course, and had ceased, in common withconverted Creston, to doubt the girl's capacity for seeing anything thatshe chose to, at any place. 

Thus a year worried on. My mother grew sleepless and pallid. She laughedoften, in a nervous, shallow way, as unlike her as a butterfly is unlikea sunset; and her face settled into an habitual sharpness and hardnessunutterably painful to me. 

Once only I ventured to break into the silence of the haunting thoughtthat, she knew and we knew, was never escaped by either. "Mother, itwould do no harm for Winthrop to go out West, and--"

She interrupted me sternly: "Sarah, I had not thought you capable ofsuch childish superstition, I wish that girl and her nonsense had nevercome into this house!"--turning sharply away, and out of the room. 

But year and struggle ended. They ended at last, as I had prayed everynight and morning of it that they should end. Mother came into my roomone night, locked the door behind her, and walking over to the window, stood with her face turned from me, and softly spoke my name. 

But that was all, for a little while. Then, --"Sick and in suffering, Sarah! The girl, --she may be right; God Almighty knows! _Sick and insuffering_, you see! I am going--I think. " Then her voice broke. 

Creston put on its spectacles and looked wise on learning, the next day, that Mrs. Dugald had taken the earliest morning train for the West, onsudden and important business. It was precisely what Creston expected, and just like the Dugalds for all the world--gone to hunt up materialfor that genealogical book, or map, or tree, or something, that theythought nobody knew they were going to publish. O yes, Crestonunderstood it perfectly. 

Space forbids me to relate in detail the clews which Selphar had givenas to the whereabouts of the wanderer. Her trances, just at this time, were somewhat scarce and fragmentary, and the information she hadprofessed to give had come in snatches and very imperfectly, --the trancebeing apt to end suddenly at the moment when some important question waspending, and then, of course, all memory of what she had said, or wasabout to say, was gone. The names and appearance of persons and placesnecessary to the search had, however, been given with sufficientdistinctness to serve as a guide in my mother's rather chimericalundertaking. I suppose ninety-nine persons out of a hundred would havethought her a candidate for the State Lunatic Asylum. Exactly what sheherself expected, hoped, or feared, I think it doubtful if she knew. Iconfess to a condition of simple bewilderment, when she was fairly gone, and Clara and I were left alone with Selphar's ghostly eyes forever onus. One night I had to lock the poor thing into her garret-room before Icould sleep. 

Just three weeks from the day on which mother started for the West, thecoach rattled up to the door, and two women, arm in arm, came slowly upthe walk. The one, erect, royal, with her great steadfast eyes alight;the other, bent and worn, gray-haired and shallow and dumb, crawlingfeebly through the golden afternoon sunshine, as the ghost of a gloriouslife might crawl back to its grave. 

Mother threw open the door, and stood there like a queen. "Children, your aunt has come home. She is too tired to talk just now. By and byshe will be glad to see you. "

We took her gently upstairs, into the room where the lilies weremouldering to dust, and laid her down upon the bed. She closed her eyeswearily, turned her face over to the wall, and said no word. 

What was the story of those tired eyes I never asked and I never knew. Once, as I passed the room, I saw, --and have always been glad that Isaw, --through the open door, the two women lying with their arms abouteach other's neck, as they used to do when they were children together, and above them, still and watchful, the wounded Face that had waitedthere so many years for this. 

She lingered weakly there, within the restful room, for seven days, andthen one morning we found her with her eyes upon the thorn-crowned Face, her own quite still and smiling. 

A little funeral train wound away one night behind the church, and lefther down among those red-cup mosses that opened in so few months againto cradle the sister who had loved her. Her name only, by mother'sorders, marked the headstone. 

 * * * * *

I have given you facts. Explain them as you will. I do not attempt it, for the simple reason that I cannot. 

A word must be said as to the fate of poor Sel, which was mournfulenough. Her trances grew gradually more frequent and erratic, till shebecame so thoroughly diseased in mind and body as to be entirelyunfitted for household work, and, in short, nothing but an encumbrance. We kept her, however, for the sake of charity, and should have done sotill her poor, tormented life wore itself out; but after the advent of anew servant, and my mother's death, she conceived the idea that she wasa burden, cried over it a few weeks, and at last, one bitter winter'snight, she disappeared. We did not give up all search for her for years, but nothing was ever heard from her. He, I hope, who permitted life tobe such a terrible mystery to her, has cared for her somehow, and kindlyand well. 

In the Gray Goth. 

If the wick of the big oil lamp had been cut straight I don't believe itwould ever have happened. 

Where is the poker, Johnny? Can't you push back that for'ard log alittle? Dear, dear! Well, it doesn't make much difference, does it?Something always seems to all your Massachusetts fires; your hickory isgreen, and your maple is gnarly, and the worms eat out your oak like asponge. I haven't seen anything like what I call a fire, --not since MaryAnn was married, and I came here to stay. "As long as you live, father, "she said; and in that very letter she told me I should always have anopen fire, and how she wouldn't let Jacob put in the air-tight in thesitting-room, but had the fireplace kept on purpose. Mary Ann was a goodgirl always, if I remember straight, and I'm sure I don't complain. Isn't that a pine-knot at the bottom of the basket? There! that'sbetter. 

Let me see; I began to tell you something, didn't I? O yes; about thatwinter of '41. I remember now. I declare, I can't get over it, to thinkyou never heard about it, and you twenty-four year old come Christmas. You don't know much more, either, about Maine folks and Maine fashionsthan you do about China, --though it's small wonder, for the matter ofthat, you were such a little shaver when Uncle Jed took you. There werea great many of us, it seems to me, that year, I 'most forget howmany;--we buried the twins next summer, didn't we?--then there was MaryAnn, and little Nancy, and--well, coffee was dearer than ever I'd seenit, I know, about that time, and butter selling for nothing; we justthrew our milk away, and there wasn't any market for eggs; besidesdoctor's bills and Isaac to be sent to school; so it seemed to be thebest thing, though your mother took on pretty badly about it at first. Jedediah has been good to you, I'm sure, and brought you upreligious, --though you've cost him a sight, spending three hundred andfifty dollars a year at Amherst College. 

But, as I was going to say, when I started to talk about '41, --to tellthe truth, Johnny, I'm always a long while coming to it, I believe. I'mgetting to be an old man, --a little of a coward, maybe, and sometimes, when I sit alone here nights, and think it over, it's just like thetoothache, Johnny. As I was saying, if she had cut that wick straight, Ido believe it wouldn't have happened, --though it isn't that I mean tolay the blame on her _now_. 

I'd been out at work all day about the place, slicking things up forto-morrow; there was a gap in the barn-yard fence to mend, --I left thattill the last thing, I remember, --I remember everything, some way orother, that happened that day, --and there was a new roof to put on thepig-pen, and the grape-vine needed an extra layer of straw, and thelatch was loose on the south barn-door; then I had to go round and takea last look at the sheep, and toss down an extra forkful for the cows, and go into the stall to have a talk with Ben, and unbutton thecoop-door to see if the hens looked warm, --just to tuck 'em up, as youmight say. I always felt sort of homesick--though I wouldn't have ownedup to it, not even to Nancy--saying good-by to the creeturs the nightbefore I went in. There, now! it beats all, to think, you don't knowwhat I'm talking about, and you a lumberman's son. "Going in" is goingup into the woods, you know, to cut and haul for the winter, --up, sometimes, a hundred miles deep, --in in the fall and out in the spring;whole gangs of us shut up there sometimes for six months, then down withthe freshets on the logs, and all summer to work the farm, --a merry sortof life when you get used to it, Johnny; but it was a great while ago, and it seems to me as if it must have been very cold. --Isn't there alittle draft coming in at the pantry door?

So when I'd said good-by to the creeturs, --I remember just as plain howBen put his great neck on my shoulder and whinnied like a baby, --thathorse know when the season came round and I was going in, just as wellas I did, --I tinkered up the barn-yard fence, and locked the doors, and went in to supper. 

I gave my finger a knock with the hammer, which may have had somethingto do with it, for a man doesn't feel very good-natured when he's beengreen enough to do a thing like that, and he doesn't like to say itaches either. But if there is anything I can't bear it is lamp-smoke; italways did put me out, and I expect it always will. Nancy knew what afuss I made about it, and she was always very careful not to hector mewith it. I ought to have remembered that, but I didn't. She had lightedthe company lamp on purpose, too, because it was my last night. I likedit better than the tallow candle. 

So I came in, stamping off the snow, and they were all in there aboutthe fire, --the twins, and Mary Ann, and the rest; baby was sick, andNancy was walking back and forth with him, with little Nancy pulling ather gown. You were the baby then, I believe, Johnny; but there alwayswas a baby, and I don't rightly remember. The room was so black withsmoke, that they all looked as if they were swimming round and round init. I guess coming in from the cold, and the pain in my finger and all, it made me a bit sick. At any rate, I threw open the window and blew outthe light, as mad as a hornet. 

"Nancy, " said I, "this room would strangle a dog, and you might haveknown it, if you'd had two eyes to see what you were about. There, now!I've tipped the lamp over, and you just get a cloth and wipe up theoil. "

"Dear me!" said she, lighting a candle, and she spoke up very soft, too. "Please, Aaron, don't let the cold in on baby. I'm sorry it was smoking, but I never knew a thing about it; he's been fretting and taking on sothe last hour, I didn't notice anyway. "

"That's just what you ought to have done, " says I, madder than ever. "You know how I hate the stuff, and you ought to have cared more aboutme than to choke me up with it this way the last night before going in. "

Nancy was a patient, gentle-spoken sort of woman, and would bear a gooddeal from a fellow; but she used to fire up sometimes, and that was morethan she could stand. "You don't deserve to be cared about, for speakinglike that!" says she, with her cheeks as red as peat-coals. 

That was right before the children. Mary Ann's eyes were as big assaucers, and little Nancy was crying at the top of her lungs, with thebaby tuning in, so we knew it was time to stop. But stopping wasn'tending; and folks can look things that they don't say. 

We sat down to supper as glum as pump-handles, there were somefritters--I never knew anybody beat your mother at fritters--smoking hotoff the stove, and some maple molasses in one of the best chinytea-cups; I knew well enough it was just on purpose for my last night, but I never had a word to say, and Nancy crumbed up the children'sbread with a jerk. Her cheeks didn't grow any whiter; it seemed as ifthey would blaze right up, --I couldn't help looking at them, for all Ipretended not to, for she looked just like a picture. Some women alwaysare pretty when they are put out, --and then again, some ain't; itappears to me there's a great difference in women, very much as there isin hens; now, there was your aunt Deborah, --but there, I won't get onthat track now, only so far as to say that when she was flustered up sheused to go red all over, something like a piny, which didn't seem tohave just the same effect. 

That supper was a very dreary sort of supper, with the baby crying, andNancy getting up between the mouthfuls to walk up and down the room withhim; he was a heavy little chap for a ten-month-old, and I think shemust have been tuckered out with him all day. I didn't think about itthen; a man doesn't notice such things when he's angry, --it isn't inhim. I can't say but _she_ would if I'd been in her place. I just eat upthe fritters and the maple molasses, --seems to me I told her she oughtnot to use the best chiny cup, but I'm not just sure, --and then I tookmy pipe, and sat down in the corner. 

I watched her putting the children to bed; they made her a great deal ofbother, squirming off of her lap and running round barefoot. Sometimes Iused to hold them and talk to them and help her a bit, when I feltgood-natured, but I just sat and smoked, and let them alone. I was allworked up about that lamp-wick, and I thought, you see, if she hadn'thad any feelings for me there was no need of my having any for her--ifshe had cut the wick, I'd have taken the babies; she hadn't cut thewick, and I wouldn't take the babies; she might see it if she wanted to, and think what she pleased. I had been badly treated, and I meant toshow it. 

It is strange, Johnny, it really does seem to me very strange, how easyit is in this world to be always taking care of our _rights. _ I'vethought a great deal about it since I've been growing old, and thereseems to me a good many things we'd better look after fust. 

But you see I hadn't found that out in '41, and so I sat in the corner, and felt very much abused. I can't say but what Nancy had pretty muchthe same idea; for when the young ones were all in bed at last, she tookher knitting and sat down the other side of the fire, sort of turningher head round and looking up at the ceiling, as if she were trying herbest to forget I was there. That was a way she had when I was courting, and we went along to huskings together, with the moon shining round. 

Well, I kept on smoking, and she kept on looking at the ceiling, andnobody said a word for a while, till by and by the fire burnt down, andshe got up and put on a fresh log. 

"You're dreadful wasteful with the wood, Nancy, " says I, bound to saysomething cross? and that was all I could think of. 

"Take care of your own fire, then, " says she, throwing the log down andstanding up as straight as she could stand. "I think it's a pity if youhaven't anything better to do, the last night before going in, than topick everything I do to pieces this way, and I tired enough to drop, carrying that great crying child in my arms all day. You ought to beashamed of yourself, Aaron Hollis!"

Now if she had cried a little, very like I should have given up, andthat would have been the end of it, for I never could bear to see awoman cry; it goes against the grain. But your mother wasn't one of thecrying sort, and she didn't feel like it that night. 

She just stood up there by the fireplace, as proud as Queen Victory, --Idon't blame her, Johnny, --O no, I don't blame her; she had the right ofit there, I _ought_ to have been ashamed of myself; but a man neverlikes to hear that from other folks, and I put my pipe down on thechimney-shelf so hard I heard it snap like ice, and I stood up too, andsaid--but no matter what I said, I guess. A man's quarrels with his wifealways make me think of what the Scripture says about other folks notintermeddling. They're things, in my opinion, that don't concern anybodyelse as a general thing, and I couldn't tell what I said without tellingwhat she said, and I'd rather not do that. Your mother was as good andpatient-tempered a woman as ever lived, Johnny, and she didn't mean it, and it was I that set her on. Besides, my words were worst of the two. 

Well, well, I'll hurry along just here, for it's not a time I like tothink about; but we had it back and forth there for half an hour, tillwe had angered each other up so I couldn't stand it, and I lifted up myhand, --I would have struck her if she hadn't been a woman. 

"Well, " says I, "Nancy Hollis, I'm sorry for the day I married you, andthat's the truth, if ever I spoke a true word in my life!"

I wouldn't have told you that now if you could understand the restwithout. I'd give the world, Johnny, --I'd give the world and all thosecoupon bonds Jedediah invested for me if I could anyway forget it; but Isaid it, and I can't. 

Well, I've seen your mother look 'most all sorts of ways in the courseof her life, but I never saw her before, and I never saw her since, lookas she looked that minute. All the blaze went out in her cheeks, as ifsomebody had thrown cold water on it, and she stood there stock still, so white I thought she would drop. 

"Aaron--" she began, and stopped to catch her breath, --"Aaron--" but shecouldn't get any further; she just caught hold of a little shawl she hadon with both her hands, as if she thought she could hold herself up byit, and walked right out of the room. I knew she had gone to bed, for Iheard her go up and shut the door. I stood there a few minutes with myhands in my pockets, whistling Yankee Doodle. Your mother used to saymen were queer folks, Johnny; they always whistled up the gayest whenthey felt the wust. Then I went to the closet and got another pipe, andI didn't go upstairs till it was smoked out. 

When I was a young man, Johnny, I used to be that sort of fellow thatcouldn't bear to give up beat. I'd acted like a brute, and I knew it, but I was too spunky to say so. So I says to myself, "If she won't makeup first, I won't, and that's the end on't. " Very likely she said thesame thing, for your mother was a spirited sort of woman when her temper_was_ up; so there we were, more like enemies sworn against each otherthan man and wife who had loved each other true for fifteen years, --awhole winter, and danger, and death perhaps, coming between us, too. 

It may seem very queer to you, Johnny, --it did to me when I was yourage, and didn't know any more than you do, --how folks can workthemselves up into great quarrels out of such little things; but theydo, and into worse, if it's a man who likes his own way, and a womanthat knows how to talk. It's my opinion, two thirds of all the divorcecases in the law-books just grow up out of things no bigger than thatlamp-wick. 

But how people that ever loved each other could come to hard words likethat, you don't see? Well, ha, ha! Johnny, that amuses me, that reallydoes amuse me, for I never saw a young man nor a young womaneither, --and young men and young women in general are very much likefresh-hatched chickens, to my mind, and know just about as much of theworld, Johnny, --well, I never saw one yet who didn't say that verything. And what's more, I never saw one who could get it into his headthat old folks knew better. 

But I say I had loved your mother true, Johnny, and she had loved metrue, for more than fifteen years; and I loved her more the fifteenthyear than I did the first, and we couldn't have got along without eachother, any more than you could get along if somebody cut your heartright out. We had laughed together and cried together; we had been sick, and we'd been well together; we'd had our hard times and our pleasanttimes right along, side by side; we'd baptized the babies, and we'dburied 'm, holding on to each other's hand; we had grown along yearafter year, through ups and downs and downs and ups, just like oneperson, and there wasn't any more dividing of us. But for all that we'dbeen put out, and we'd had our two ways, and we had spoken our sharpwords like any other two folks, and this wasn't our first quarrel by anymeans. 

I tell you, Johnny, young folks they start in life with very prettyideas, --very pretty. But take it as a general thing, they don't know anymore what they're talking about than they do about each other, and theydon't know any more about each other than they do about the man in themoon. They begin very nice, with their new carpets and teaspoons, and alittle mending to do, and coming home early evenings to talk; but by andby the shine wears off. Then come the babies, and worry and wear andtemper. About that time they begin to be a little acquainted, and tofind out that there are two wills and two sets of habits to be fittedsomehow. It takes them anywhere along from one year to three to getjostled down together. As for smoothing off, there's more or less ofthat to be done always. 

Well, I didn't sleep very well that night, dropping into naps and wakingup. The baby was worrying over his teeth every half-hour, and Nancygetting up to walk him off to sleep in her arms, --it was the only wayyou _would_ be hushed up, and you'd lie and yell till somebody did it. 

Now, it wasn't many times since we'd been married that I had let her dothat thing all night long. I used to have a way of getting up to take myturn, and sending her off to sleep. It isn't a man's business, somefolks say. I don't know anything about that; maybe, if I'd been broilingmy brain in book learning all day till come night, and I was hard put toit to get my sleep anyhow, like the parson there, it wouldn't; but allI know is, what if I had been breaking my back in the potato-patch sincemorning? so she'd broken her's over the oven; and what if I did neednine hours' sound sleep? I could chop and saw without it next day, justas well as she could do the ironing, to say nothing of my being a greatstout fellow, --there wasn't a chap for ten miles round with mymuscle, --and she with those blue veins on her forehead. Howsomever thatmay be, I wasn't used to letting her do it by herself, and so I lay withmy eyes shut, and pretended that I was asleep; for I didn't feel likegiving in, and speaking up gentle, not about that nor anything else. 

I could see her though, between my eyelashes, and I lay there, everytime I woke up, and watched her walking back and forth, back and forth, up and down, with the heavy little fellow in her arms, all night long. 

Sometimes, Johnny, when I'm gone to bed now of a winter night, I think Isee her in her white nightgown with her red-plaid shawl pinned over hershoulders and over the baby, walking up and down, and up and down. Ishut my eyes, but there she is, and I open them again, but I see her allthe same. 

I was off very early in the morning; I don't think it could have beenmuch after three o'clock when I woke up. Nancy had my breakfast all laidout overnight, except the coffee, and we had fixed it that I was to makeup the fire, and get off without waking her, if the baby was very bad. At least, that was the way I wanted it; but she stuck to it she shouldbe up, --that was before there'd been any words between us. 

The room was very gray and still, --I remember just how it looked, withNancy's clothes on a chair, and the baby's shoes lying round. She hadgot him off to sleep in his cradle, and had dropped into a nap, poorthing! with her face as white as the sheet, from watching. 

I stopped when I was dressed, half-way out of the room, and looked roundat it, --it was so white, Johnny! It would be a long time before I shouldsee it again, --five months were a long time; then there was the risk, coming down in the freshets, and the words I'd said last night. Ithought, you see, if I should kiss it once, --I needn't wake herup, --maybe I should go off feeling better. So I stood there looking: shewas lying so still, I couldn't see any more stir to her than if she hadher breath held in. I wish I had done it, Johnny, --I can't get overwishing I'd done it, yet. But I was just too proud, and I turned roundand went out, and shut the door. 

We were going to meet down at the post-office, the whole gang of us, andI had quite a spell to walk. I was going in on Bob Stokes's team. Iremember how fast I walked with my hands in my pockets, looking along upat the stars, --the sun was putting them out pretty fast, --and trying notto think of Nancy. But I didn't think of anything else. 

It was so early, that there wasn't many folks about to see us off; butBob Stokes's wife, --she lived nigh the office, just across theroad, --she was there to say good-by, kissing of him, and crying on hisshoulder. I don't know what difference that should make with Bob Stokes, but I snapped him up well, when he came along, and said good morning. 

There were twenty-one of us just, on that gang, in on contract for Doveand Beadle. Dove and Beadle did about the heaviest thing on woodland ofanybody, about that time. Good, steady men we were, most of us, --none ofyour blundering Irish, that wouldn't know a maple from a hickory, withtheir gin-bottles in their pockets, --but our solid, Down-East Yankeeheads, owning their farms all along the river, with schooling enough toknow what they were about 'lection day. You didn't catch any of _us_voting your new-fangled tickets when he had meant to go up on Whig, forwant of knowing the difference, nor visa vussy. To say nothing of BobStokes, and Holt, and me, and another fellow, --I forget his name, --beingmembers in good and reg'lar standing, and paying in our five dollars tothe parson every quarter, charitable. 

Yes, though I say it that shouldn't say it, we were as fine a lookinggang as any in the county, starting off that morning in our reduniform, --Nancy took a sight of pains with my shirt, sewing it up stout, for fear it should bother me ripping, and I with nobody to take a stitchfor me all winter. The boys went off in good spirits, singing till theywere out of sight of town, and waving their caps at their wives andbabies standing in the window along on the way. I didn't sing. I thoughtthe wind blew too hard, --seems to me that was the reason, --I'm surethere must have been a reason, for I had a voice of my own in thosedays, and had led the choir perpetual for five years. 

We weren't going in very deep; Dove and Beadle's lots lay about thirtymiles from the nearest house; and a straggling, lonely sort of placethat was too, five miles out of the village, with nobody but a dog and adeaf old woman in it. Sometimes, as I was telling you, we had been in ahundred miles from any human creature but ourselves. 

It took us two days to get there though, with the oxen; and the teamswere loaded down well, with so many axes and the pork-barrels;--I don'tknow anything like pork for hefting down more than you expect it to, reasonable. It was one of your ugly gray days, growing dark at fouro'clock, with snow in the air, when we hauled up in the lonely place. The trees were blazed pretty thick, I remember, especially the pines;Dove and Beadle always had that done up prompt in October. It's prettywork going in blazing while the sun is warm, and the woods like a greatbonfire with the maples. I used to like it, but your mother wouldn'thear of it when she could help herself, it kept me away so long. 

It's queer, Johnny, how we do remember things that ain't of no account;but I remember, as plainly as if it were yesterday morning, just howeverything looked that night, when the teams came up, one by one, and wewent to work spry to get to rights before the sun went down. 

There were three shanties, --they don't often have more than two or threein one place, --they were empty, and the snow had drifted in; BobStokes's oxen were fagged out with their heads hanging down, and thehorses were whinnying for their supper. Holt had one of his greatbrush-fires going, --there was nobody like Holt for making fires, --andthe boys were hurrying round in their red shirts, shouting at the oxen, and singing a little, some of them low, under their breath, to keeptheir spirits up. There was snow as far as you could see, --down thecart-path, and all around, and away into the woods; and there was snowin the sky now, setting in for a regular nor'easter. The trees stood upstraight all around without any leaves, and under the bushes it was asblack as pitch. 

"Five months, " said I to myself, --"five months!"

"What in time's the matter with you, Hollis?" says Bob Stokes, with agreat slap on my arm; "you're giving that 'ere ox molasses on his hay!"

Sure enough I was, and he said I acted like a dazed creatur, and verylikely I did. But I couldn't have told Bob the reason. You see, I knewNancy was just drawing up her little rocking-chair--the one with the redcushion--close by the fire, sitting there with the children to wait forthe tea to boil. And I knew--I couldn't help knowing, if I'd tried hardfor it--how she was crying away softly in the dark, so that none ofthem could see her, to think of the words we'd said, and I gone inwithout ever making of them up. I was sorry for them then. O Johnny, Iwas sorry, and she was thirty miles away. I'd got to be sorry fivemonths, thirty miles away, and couldn't let her know. 

The boys said I was poor company that first week, and I shouldn't wonderif I was. I couldn't seem to get over it any way, to think I couldn'tlet her know. 

If I could have sent her a scrap of a letter, or a message, orsomething, I should have felt better. But there wasn't any chance ofthat this long time, unless we got out of pork or fodder, and had tosend down, --which we didn't expect to, for we'd laid in more than usual. 

We had two pretty rough weeks' work to begin with, for the worst stormsof the season set in, and kept in, and I never saw their like, before orsince. It seemed as if there'd never be an end to them. Storm afterstorm, blow after blow, freeze after freeze; half a day's sunshine, andthen at it again! We were well tired of it before they stopped; it madethe boys homesick. 

However, we kept at work pretty brisk, --lumber-men aren't the fellows tobe put out for a snow-storm, --cutting and hauling and sawing, out inthe sleet and wind. Bob Stokes froze his left foot that second week, andI was frost-bitten pretty badly myself. Cullen--he was the boss--he waswell out of sorts, I tell you, before the sun came out, and cross enoughto bite a tenpenny nail in two. 

But when the sun _is_ out, it isn't so bad a kind of life, after all. Atwork all day, with a good hot dinner in the middle; then back to theshanties at dark, to as rousing a fire and tiptop swagan as anybodycould ask for. Holt was cook that season, and Holt couldn't be beaten onhis swagan. 

Now you don't mean to say you don't know what swagan is? Well, well! Tothink of it! All I have to say is, you don't know what's good then. Beans and pork and bread and molasses, --that's swagan, --all stirred upin a great kettle, and boiled together; and I don't know anything--noteven your mother's fritters--I'd give more for a taste of now. We justabout lived on that; there's nothing you can cut and haul all day onlike swagan. Besides that, we used to have doughnuts, --you don't knowwhat doughnuts are here in Massachusetts; as big as a dinner-plate thosedoughnuts were, and--well, a little hard, perhaps. They used to have itabout in Bangor that we used them for clock pendulums, but I don't knowabout that. 

I used to think a great deal about Nancy nights, when we were sitting upby the fire, --we had our fire right in the middle of the hut, you know, with a hole in the roof to let the smoke out. When supper was eaten, theboys all sat up around it, and told stories, and sang, and cracked theirjokes; then they had their backgammon and cards; we got sleepy early, along about nine or ten o'clock, and turned in under the roof with ourblankets. The roof sloped down, you know, to the ground; so we lay withour heads in under the little eaves, and our feet to the fire, --ten ortwelve of us to a shanty, all round in a row. They built the huts uplike a baby's cob-house, with the logs fitted in together. I used tothink a great deal about your mother, as I was saying; sometimes I wouldlie awake when the rest were off as sound as a top, and think about her. Maybe it was foolish, and I'm sure I wouldn't have told anybody of it;but I couldn't get rid of the notion that something might happen to heror to me before five months were out, and I with those words unforgiven. 

Then, perhaps, when I went to sleep, I would dream about her, walkingback and forth, up and down, in her nightgown and little red shawl, withthe great heavy baby in her arms. 

So it went along till come the last of January, when one day I saw theboys all standing round in a heap, and talking. 

"What's the matter?" says I. 

"Pork's given out, " says Bob, with a whistle. "Beadle got that last lotfrom Jenkins there, his son-in-law, and it's sp'ilt. I could have toldhim that beforehand. Never knew Jenkins to do the fair thing by anybodyyet. "

"Who's going down?" said I, stopping short. I felt the blood run allover my face, like a woman's. 

"Cullen hasn't made up his mind yet, " says Bob, walking off. 

Now you see there wasn't a man on the ground who wouldn't jump at thechance to go; it broke up the winter for them, and sometimes they couldrun in home for half an hour, driving by; so there wasn't much of a hopefor me. But I went straight to Mr. Cullen. 

"Too late! Just promised Jim Jacobs, " said he, speaking up quick; it wasjust business to him, you know. 

I turned off, and I didn't say a word. I wouldn't have believed it, Inever would have believed it, that I could have felt so cut up aboutsuch a little thing. Cullen looked round at me sharp. 

"Hilloa, Hollis!" said he. "What's to pay?"

"Nothing, thank you, sir, " says I, and walked off, whistling. 

I had a little talk with Jim alone. He said he would take good care ofanything I'd give him, and carry it straight. So when night came I wentand borrowed Mr. Cullen's pencil, and Holt tore me off a bit of cleanbrown paper he found in the flour-barrel, and I went off among the treeswith it alone. I built a little fire for myself out of ahuckleberry-bush, and sat down there on the snow to write. I couldn't doit in the shanty, with the noise and singing. The little brown paperwouldn't hold much; but these were the words I wrote, --I remember everyone of them, --it is curious now I should, and that more than twentyyears ago:--

"Dear Nancy, "--that was it, --"Dear Nancy, I can't get over it, and Itake them all back. And if anything happens coming down on the logs--"

I couldn't finish that anyhow, so I just wrote "Aaron" down in thecorner, and folded the brown paper up. It didn't look any more like"Aaron" than it did like "Abimelech, " though; for I didn't see a singleletter I wrote, --not one. 

After that I went to bed, and wished I was Jim Jacobs. 

Next morning somebody woke me up with a push, and there was the boss. 

"Why, Mr. Cullen!" says I, with a jump. 

"Hurry up, man, and eat your breakfast, " said he; "Jacobs is down sickwith his cold. "

"_Oh!_" said I. 

"You and the pork must be back here day after to-morrow, --so be spry, "said he. 

I rather think I was, Johnny. 

It was just eight o'clock when I started; it took some time to getbreakfast, and feed the nags, and get orders. I stood there, slappingthe snow with my whip, crazy to be off, hearing the last of what Mr. Cullen had to say. 

They gave me the two horses, --we hadn't but two, --oxen are tougher forgoing in, as a general thing, --and the lightest team on the ground; itwas considerably lighter than Bob Stokes's. If it hadn't been for thesnow, I might have put the thing through in two days, but the snow wasup to the creatures' knees in the shady places all along; off from theroad, in among the gullies, you could stick a four-foot measure downanywhere. So they didn't look for me back before Wednesday night. 

"I must have that pork Wednesday night sure, " says Cullen. 

"Well, sir, " says I, "you shall have it Wednesday noon, Providencepermitting; and you shall have it Wednesday night anyway. "

"You will have a storm to do it in, I'm afraid, " said he, looking at theclouds, just as I was whipping up. "You're all right on the road, Isuppose?"

"All right, " said I; and I'm sure I ought to have been, for the timesI'd been over it. 

Bess and Beauty--they were the horses, and of all the ugly nags thatever I saw Beauty was the ugliest--started off on a round trot, slewingalong down the hill; they knew they were going home just as well as Idid. I looked back, as we turned the corner, to see the boys standinground in their red shirts, with the snow behind them, and the fire andthe shanties. I felt a mite lonely when I couldn't see them any more;the snow was so dead still, and there were thirty miles of it to crossbefore I could see human face again. 

The clouds had an ugly look, --a few flakes had fallen already, --and thesnow was purple, deep in as far as you could see under the trees. Something made me think of Ben Gurnell, as I drove on, looking alongdown the road to keep it straight. You never heard about it? Poor Ben!Poor Ben! It was in '37, that was; he had been out hunting up blazedtrees, they said, and wandered away somehow into the Gray Goth, and wentover, --it was two hundred feet; they didn't find him, not tillspring, --just a little heap of bones; his wife had them taken home andburied, and by and by they had to take her away to a hospital inPortland, --she talked so horribly, and thought she saw bones roundeverywhere. 

There is no place like the woods for bringing a storm down on you quick;the trees are so thick you don't mind the first few flakes, till, firstyou know, there's a whirl of 'em, and the wind is up. 

I was minding less about it than usual, for I was thinking ofNannie, --that's what I used to call her, Johnny, when she was a girl, but it seems a long time ago, that does. I was thinking how surprisedshe'd be, and pleased. I knew she would be pleased. I didn't think sopoorly of her as to suppose she wasn't just as sorry now as I was forwhat had happened. I knew well enough how she would jump and throw downher sewing with a little scream, and run and put her arms about my neckand cry, and couldn't help herself. 

So I didn't mind about the snow, for planning it all out, till all atonce I looked up, and something slashed into my eyes and stung me, --itwas sleet. 

"Oho!" said I to myself, with a whistle, --it was a very long whistle, Johnny; I knew well enough then it was no play-work I had before me tillthe sun went down, nor till morning either. 

That was about noon, --it couldn't have been half an hour since I'd eatenmy dinner; I eat it driving, for I couldn't bear to waste time. 

The road wasn't broken there an inch, and the trees were thin; there'dbeen a clearing there years ago, and wide, white, level places wound offamong the trees; one looked as much like a road as another, for thematter of that. I pulled my visor down over my eyes to keep the sleetout, --after they're stung too much they're good for nothing to see with, and I _must_ see, if I meant to keep that road. 

It began to be cold. You don't know what it is to be cold, you don't, Johnny, in the warm gentleman's life you've lived. I was used to Maineforests, and I was used to January, but that was what I call cold. 

The wind blew from the ocean, straight as an arrow. The sleet blew everyway, --into your eyes, down your neck, in like a knife into your cheeks. I could feel the snow crunching in under the runners, crisp, turned toice in a minute. I reached out to give Bess a cut on the neck, and thesleeve of my coat was stiff as pasteboard before I bent my elbow upagain. 

If you looked up at the sky, your eyes were shut with a snap as ifsomebody'd shot them. If you looked in under the trees, you could seethe icicles a minute, and the purple shadows. If you looked straightahead, you couldn't see a thing. 

By and by I thought I had dropped the reins, I looked at my hands, andthere I was holding them tight. I knew then that it was time to get outand walk. 

I didn't try much after that to look ahead; it was of no use, for thesleet was fine, like needles, twenty of 'em in your eye at a wink; thenit was growing dark. Bess and Beauty knew the road as well as I did, soI had to trust to them. I thought I must be coming near the clearingwhere I'd counted on putting up overnight, in case I couldn't reach thedeaf old woman's. 

There was a man just out of Bangor the winter before, walking just sobeside his team, and he kept on walking, some folks said, after thebreath was gone, and they found him frozen up against the sleigh-poles. I would have given a good deal if I needn't have thought of that justthen. But I did, and I kept walking on. 

Pretty soon Bess stopped short. Beauty was pulling on, --Beauty alwaysdid pull on, --but she stopped too. I couldn't stop so easily, so Iwalked along like a machine, up on a line with the creaturs' ears. I_did_ stop then, or you never would have heard this story, Johnny. 

Two paces, --and those two hundred feet shot down like a plummet. A greatcloud of snow-flakes puffed up over the edge. There were rocks at myright hand, and rocks at my left. There was the sky overhead. I was inthe Gray Goth!

I sat down as weak as a baby. If I didn't think of Ben Gurnell then, Inever thought of him. It roused me up a bit, perhaps, for I had thesense left to know that I couldn't afford to sit down just yet, and Iremembered a shanty that I must have passed without seeing; it was justat the opening of the place where the rocks narrowed, built, as theybuild their light-houses, to warn folks to one side. There was a log orsomething put up after Gurnell went over, but it was of no account, coming on it suddenly. There was no going any farther that night, thatwas clear; so I put about into the hut, and got my fire going, and Bessand Beauty and I, we slept together. 

It was an outlandish name to give it, seems to me, anyway. I don't knowwhat a Goth is, Johnny; maybe you do. There was a great figger up on therock, about eight feet high; some folks thought it looked like a man. Inever thought so before, but that night it did kind of stare in throughthe door as natural as life. 

When I woke up in the morning I thought I was on fire. I stirred andturned over, and I was ice. My tongue was swollen up so I couldn'tswallow without strangling. I crawled up to my feet, and every bone inme was stiff as a shingle. 

Bess was looking hard at me, whinnying for her breakfast. "Bess, " saysI, very slow, "we must get home--to-night--_any_--how. "

I pushed open the door. It creaked out into a great drift, and slammedback. I squeezed through and limped out. The shanty stood up a little, in the highest part of the Goth. I went down a little, --I went as far asI could go. There was a pole lying there, blown down in the night; itcame about up to my head. I sunk it into the snow, and drew it up. 

Just six feet. 

I went back to Bess and Beauty, and I shut the door. I told them Icouldn't help it, --something ailed my arms, --I couldn't shovel them outto-day. I must lie down and wait till to-morrow. 

I waited till to-morrow. It snowed all day, and it snowed all night. Itwas snowing when I pushed the door out again into the drift. I went backand lay down. I didn't seem to care. 

The third day the sun came out, and I thought about Nannie. I was goingto surprise her. She would jump up and run and put her arms about myneck. I took the shovel, and crawled out on my hands and knees. I dugit down, and fell over on it like a baby. 

After that, I understood. I'd never had a fever in my life, and it's notstrange that I shouldn't have known before. 

It came all over me in a minute, I think. I couldn't shovel through. Nobody could hear. I might call, and I might shout. By and by the firewould go out. Nancy would not come. Nancy did not know. Nancy and Ishould never kiss and make up now. 

I struck my arm out into the air, and shouted out her name, and yelledit out. Then I crawled out once more into the drift. 

I tell you, Johnny, I was a stout-hearted man, who'd never known a fear. I could freeze. I could burn up there alone in the horrid place withfever. I could starve. It wasn't death nor awfulness I couldn'tface, --not that, not _that_; but I loved her true, I say, --I loved hertrue, and I'd spoken my last words to her, my very last; I had left her_those_ to remember, day in and day out, and year upon year, as long asshe remembered her husband, as long as she remembered anything. 

I think I must have gone pretty nearly mad with the fever and thethinking. I fell down there like a log, and lay groaning. "God Almighty!God Almighty!" over and over, not knowing what it was that I was saying, till the words strangled in my throat. 

Next day, I was too weak so much as to push open the door. I crawledaround the hut on my knees with my hands up over my head, shouting outas I did before, and fell, a helpless heap, into the corner; after thatI never stirred. 

How many days had gone, or how many nights, I had no more notion thanthe dead. I knew afterwards; when I knew how they waited and expectedand talked and grew anxious, and sent down home to see if I was there, and how she--But no matter, no matter about that. 

I used to scoop up a little snow when I woke up from the stupors. Thebread was the other side of the fire; I couldn't reach round. Beauty eatit up one day; I saw her. Then the wood was used up. I clawed out chipswith my nails from the old rotten logs the shanty was made of, and keptup a little blaze. By and by I couldn't pull any more. Then there wereonly some coals, --then a little spark. I blew at that spark a longwhile, --I hadn't much breath. One night it went out, and the wind blewin. One day I opened my eyes, and Bess had fallen down in the corner, dead and stiff. Beauty had pushed out of the door somehow and gone. Ishut up my eyes. I don't think I cared about seeing Bess, --I can'tremember very well. 

Sometimes I thought Nancy was there in the plaid shawl, walking roundthe ashes where the spark went out. Then again I thought Mary Ann wasthere, and Isaac, and the baby. But they never were. I used to wonderif I wasn't dead, and hadn't made a mistake about the place that I wasgoing to. 

One day there was a noise. I had heard a great many noises, so I didn'ttake much notice. It came up crunching on the snow, and I didn't knowbut it was Gabriel or somebody with his chariot. Then I thought morelikely it was a wolf. 

Pretty soon I looked up, and the door was open; some men were coming in, and a woman. She was ahead of them all, she was; she came in with agreat spring, and had my head against her neck, and her arm holding meup, and her cheek down to mine, with her dear, sweet, warm breath allover me; and that was all I knew. 

Well, there was brandy, and there was a fire, and there were blankets, and there was hot water, and I don't know what; but warmer than all therest I felt her breath against my cheek, and her arms about my neck, andher long hair, which she had wrapped all in, about my hands. 

So by and by my voice came. "Nannie!" said I. 

"O don't!" said she, and first I knew she was crying. 

"But I will, " says I, "for I'm sorry. "

"Well, so am I, " says she. 

Said I, "I thought I was dead, and hadn't made up, Nannie. "

"O _dear_!" said she; and down fell a great hot splash right on my face. 

Says I, "It was all me, for I ought to have gone back and kissed you. "

"No, it was _me_" said she, "for I wasn't asleep, not any such thing. Ipeeked out, this way, through my lashes, to see if you wouldn't comeback. I meant to wake up then. Dear me!" says she, "to think what acouple of fools we were, now!"

"Nannie, " says I, "you can let the lamp smoke all you want to!"

"Aaron--" she began, just as she had begun that other night, --"Aaron--"but she didn't finish, and--Well, well, no matter; I guess you don'twant to hear any more, do you?

But sometimes I think, Johnny, when it comes my time to go, --if ever itdoes, --I've waited a good while for it, --the first thing I shall seewill be her face, looking as it looked at me just then. 

Calico. 

It was about time for the four-o'clock train. 

After all, I wonder if it is worth telling, --such a simple, plotlessrecord of a young girl's life, made up of Mondays and Tuesdays andWednesdays, like yours or mine. Sharley was so exactly like otherpeople! How can it be helped that nothing remarkable happened to her?But you would like the story?

It was about time for the four-o'clock train, then. 

Sharley, at the cost of half a sugar-bowl (never mind syntax; you know Imean the sugar, not the glass), had enticed Moppet to betake himself outof sight and out of mind till somebody should signify a desire for hisengaging presence; had steered clear of Nate and Methuselah, and wasstanding now alone on the back doorsteps opposite the chaise-house. Onecould see a variety of things from those doorsteps, --the chaise-house, for instance, with the old, solid, square-built wagon rolled into it(Sharley passed many a long "mending morning" stowed in among thecushions of that old wagon); the great sweet-kept barn, where the sunstole in warm at the chinks and filtered through the hay; the well-curbfolded in by a shadow; the wood-pile, and the chickens, and thekitchen-garden; a little slope, too, with a maple on it and shades ofbrown and gold upon the grass; brown and golden tints across the hills, and a sky of blue and gold to dazzle one. Then there was a flock ofrobins dipping southward. There was also the railroad. 

Sharley may have had her dim consciousness of the cosey barn andchicken's chirp, of brown and gold and blue and dazzle and glory; butyou don't suppose _that_ was what she had outgeneralled Moppet andstolen the march upon Nate and Methuselah for. The truth is, that thechild had need of none of these things--neither skies nor dazzle norglory--that golden autumn afternoon. Had the railroad bounded theuniverse just then, she would have been content. For Sharley was only agirl, --a very young, not very happy, little girl, --and Halcombe Dike wascoming home to spend the Sunday. 

Halcombe Dike, --her old friend Halcombe Dike. She said the words over, apologizing a bit to herself for being there to watch that railroad. Halused to be good to her when she was bothered with the children and morethan half tired of life. "Keep up good courage, Sharley, " he would say. For the long summer he had not been here to say it. And to-night hewould be here. To-night--to-night! Why should not one be glad when one'sold friends come back?

Mrs. Guest, peering through the pantry window, observed--and observedwith some motherly displeasure, which she would have expressed had itnot been too much trouble to open the window--that Sharley had put onher barbe, --that black barbe with the pink watered ribbons run throughit. So extravagant in Sharley! Sharley would fain have been soextravagant as to put on her pink muslin too this afternoon; she hadbeen more than half inclined to cry because she could not; but as it wasnot orthodox in Green Valley to wear one's "best clothes" on week-days, except at picnics or prayer-meetings, she had submitted, sighing, to hersprigged calico. It would have been worth while, though, to have seenher half an hour ago up in her room under the eaves, considering thequestion; she standing there with the sleeves of her dressing-sackfallen away from her pink, bare arms, and the hair clinging loose andmoist to her bare white neck; to see her smooth the shimmeringfolds, --there were rose-buds on that muslin, --and look and long, hang itup, and turn away. Why could there not be a little more rose-bud andshimmer in people's lives! "Seems to me it's all calico!" cried Sharley. 

Then to see her overturning her ribbon-box! Nobody but a girl knows howgirls dream over their ribbons. 

"He is coming!" whispered Sharley to the little bright barbe, and to thelittle bright face that flushed and fluttered at her in the glass, --"Heis coming!"

Sharley looked well, waiting there in the calico and lace upon thedoorstep. It is not everybody who would look well in calico and lace;yet if you were to ask me, I could not tell you how pretty Sharley is, or if she is pretty at all. I have a memory of soft hair--brown, Ithink--and wistful eyes; and that I never saw her without a desire tostroke her, and make her pur as I would a kitten. 

How stiff and stark and black the railroad lay on its yellow ridge!Sharley drew her breath when the sudden four-o'clock whistle smote theair, and a faint, far trail of smoke puffed through the woods, and woundover the barren outline. 

Her mother, seeing her steal away through the kitchen-garden, and downthe slope, called after her:--

"Charlotte! going to walk? I wish you'd let the baby go too. Well, shedoesn't hear!"

I will not assert that Sharley did not hear. To be frank, she was rathertired of that baby. 

There was a foot-path through the brown and golden grass, and Sharleyran over it, under the maple, which was dropping yellow leaves, and downto the knot of trees which lined the farther walls. There was a nookhere--she knew just where--into which one might creep, tangled in withthe low-hanging green of apple and spruce, and wound about withgrape-vines. Stooping down, careful not to catch that barbe upon thebrambles, and careful not to soil so much as a sprig of the clean lightcalico, Sharley hid herself in the shadow. She could see unseen now thegreat puffs of purple smoke, the burning line of sandy bank, thestation, and the uphill road to the village. Oddly enough, some oldScripture words--Sharley was not much in the habit of quotingScripture--came into her thoughts just as she had curled herselfcomfortably up beside the wall, her watching face against thegrape-leaves: "But what went ye out for to see?" "What went ye out forto see?" She went on, dreamily finishing, "A prophet? Yea, I say untoyou, and more than a prophet, " and stopped, scarlet. What had prophetsto do with her old friend Halcombe Dike?

Ah, but he was coming! he was coming! To Sharley's eyes the laboring, crazy locomotive which puffed him asthmatically up to the little depotwas a benevolent dragon, --if there were such things as benevolentdragons, --very horrible, and she was very much afraid of it; but verygracious, and she should like to go out and pat it on the shoulder. 

The train slackened, jarred, and stopped. An old woman with thirteenbundles climbed out laboriously. Two small boys turned somersaults fromthe platform. Sharley strained her wistful eyes till they ached. Therewas nobody else. Sharley was very young, and very much disappointed, andshe cried. The glory had died from the skies. The world had gone out. 

She was sitting there all in a heap, her face in her hands, and herheart in her foolish eyes, when a step sounded near, and a voice hummingan old army song. She knew it; he had taught it to her himself. She knewthe step; for she had long ago trained her slippered feet to keep pacewith it. He had stepped from the wrong side of the car, perhaps, or hereager eyes had missed him; at any rate here he was, --a young man, withhonest eyes, and mouth a little grave; a very plainly dressed youngman, --his coat was not as new as Sharley's calico, --but a young man witha good step of his own, --strong, elastic, --and a nervous hand. 

He passed, humming his army song, and never knew how the world lightedup again within a foot of him. He passed so near that Sharley bystretching out her hand could have touched him, --so near that she couldhear the breath he drew. He was thinking to himself, perhaps, that noone had come from home to meet him, and he had been long away; but then, it was not his mother's fashion of welcome, and quickening his pace atthe thought of her, he left the tangle of green behind, and the littlewet face crushed breathless up against the grape-leaves, and was out ofsight and knew nothing. 

Sharley sprang up and bounded home. Her mother opened her languid eyeswide when the child came in. 

"Dear me, Charlotte, how you do go chirping and hopping round, and mewith this great baby and my sick-headache! _I_ can't chirp and hop. Youlook as if somebody'd set you on fire! What's the matter with you, child?"

What was the matter, indeed! Sharley, in a little spasm ofpenitence, --one can afford to be penitent when one is happy, --took thebaby and went away to think about it. Surely he would come to see herto-night; he did not often come home without seeing Sharley; and he hadbeen long away. At any rate he was here; in this very Green Valley wherethe days had dragged so drearily without him; his eyes saw the same skythat hers saw; his breath drank the same sweet evening wind; his feettrod the roads that she had trodden yesterday, and would tread againto-morrow. But I will not tell them any more of this, --shall I, Sharley?

She threw her head back and looked up, as she walked to and fro throughthe yard with the heavy baby fretting on her shoulder. The skies wereaflame now, for the sun was dropping slowly. "He is here!" they said. Abelated robin took up the word: "He is here!" The yellow maple glitteredall over with it: "Sharley, he is here!"

"The butter is here, " called her mother relevantly from the house. "Thebutter is here now, and it's time to see about supper, Charlotte. "

"More calico!" said impatient Sharley, and she gave the baby a jerk. 

Whether he came or whether he did not come, there was no more time forSharley to dream that night. In fact, there seldom was any time to dreamin Mrs. Guest's household. Mrs. Guest believed in keeping people busy. She was busy enough herself when her head did not ache. When it did, itwas the least she could do to see that other people were busy. 

So Sharley had the table to set, and the biscuit to bake, and the tea tomake, and the pears to pick over; she must run upstairs to bring hermother a handkerchief; she must hurry for her father's clothes-brushwhen he came in tired, and not so good-humored as he might be, from hisstore; she must stop to rebuild the baby's block-house, that Moppet hadkicked over, and snap Moppet's dirty, dimpled fingers for kicking itover, and endure the shriek that Moppet set up therefor. She mustsuggest to Methuselah that he could find, perhaps, a more suitablebook-mark for Robinson Crusoe than his piece of bread and molasses, andintimate doubts as to the propriety of Nate's standing on thetable-cloth and sitting on the toast-rack. And then Moppet was at thatbaby again, dropping very cold pennies down his neck. They must be madepresentable for supper, too, Moppet and Nate and Methuselah, --Methuselah, Nate, and Moppet; brushed and washed and dusted and coaxed and scoldedand borne with. There was no end to it. Would there ever be any end toit? Sharley sometimes asked of her weary thoughts. Sharley's life, likethe lives of most girls at her age, was one great unanswered question. It grew tiresome occasionally, as monologues are apt to do. 

"I'm going to holler to-night, " announced Moppet at supper, pausing inthe midst of his berry-cake, by way of diversion, to lift the cat up byher tail. "I'm going to holler awful, and make you sit up and tell meabout that little boy that ate the giant, and Cinderella, --how she livedin the stove-pipe, --and that man that builded his house out of a bungleof straws: and--well, there's some more, but I don't remember 'em justnow, you know. "

"O Moppet!"

"I am, " glared Moppet over his mug. "You made me put on a clean collar. You see if I don't holler an' holler an' holler an' keep-a-hollerin'!"

Sharley's heart sank; but she patiently cleared away her dishes, mixedher mother's ipecac, read her father his paper, went upstairs with thechildren, treated Moppet with respect as to his buttons and boot-lacing, and tremblingly bided her time. 

"Well, " condescended that young gentleman, before his prayers were over, "I b'lieve--give us our debts--I'll keep that hollerin'--forever 'never--Namen--till to-morrow night. I ain't a--bit--sleepy, but--" Andnobody heard anything more from Moppet. 

The coast was clear now, and happy Sharley, with bright cheeks, took herlittle fall hat that she was trimming, and sat down on the frontdoorsteps; sat there to wait and watch, and hope and dream and flutter, and sat in vain. Twilight crept up the path, up to her feet, folded herin; the warm color of her plaided ribbons faded away under her eyes, anddropped from her listless fingers; with them had faded her bit of a hopefor that night; Hal always came before dark. 

"Who cares?" said Sharley, with a toss of her soft, brown head. Somebodydid care nevertheless. Somebody winked hard as she went upstairs. 

However, she could light a lamp and finish her hat. That was onecomfort. It always _is_ a comfort to finish one's hat. Girls haveforgotten graver troubles than Sharley's in the excitement of hurriedSaturday-night millinery. 

A bonnet is a picture in its way, and grows up under one's fingers witha pretty sense of artistic triumph. Besides, there is always thequestion: Will it be becoming? So Sharley put her lamp on a cricket, andherself on the floor, and began to sing over her work. A pretty sight itwas, --the low, dark room with the heavy shadows in its corners; all thelight and color drawn to a focus in the middle of it; Sharley, with herhead bent--bits of silk like broken rainbows tossed about her--and thatlittle musing smile, considering gravely, Should the white squares ofthe plaid turn outward? and where should she put the coral? and would itbe becoming after all? A pretty, girlish sight, and you may laugh at itif you choose; but there was a prettier woman's tenderness underlyingit, just as a strain of fine, coy sadness will wind through a mazourkaor a waltz. For who would see the poor little hat to-morrow at church?and would he like it? and when he came to-morrow night, --for of coursehe would come to-morrow night, --would he tell her so?

When everybody else was in bed and the house still, Sharley locked herdoor, furtively stole to the bureau-glass, shyly tied on that hat, andmore shyly peeped in. A flutter of October colors and two great browneyes looked back at her encouragingly. 

"I should like to be pretty, " said Sharley, and asked the next minute tobe forgiven for the vanity. "At any rate, " by way of modification, "Ishould like to be pretty to-morrow. "

She prayed for Halcombe Dike when she kneeled, with her face hidden inher white bed, to say "Our Father. " I believe she had prayed for him nowevery night for a year. Not that there was any need of it, she reasoned, for was he not a great deal better than she could ever be? Far aboveher; oh, as far above her as the shining of the stars was above theshining of the maple-tree; but perhaps if she prayed very hard theywould give one extra, beautiful angel charge over him. Then, was it notquite right to pray for one's old friends? Besides--besides, they had apleasant sound, those two words: "_Our_ Father. "

"I will be good to-morrow, " said Sharley, dropping into sleep. "Mother's head will ache, and I can go to church. I will listen to theminister, and I won't plan out my winter dresses in prayer-time. I won'tbe cross to Moppet, nor shake Methuselah. I will be good. Hal will helpme to be good. I shall see him in the morning, --in the morning. "

Sharley's self-knowledge, like the rest of her, was in the bud yet. 

Her Sun-day, her one warm, shining day, opened all in a glow. She danceddown stairs at ten o'clock in the new hat, in a haze of merry colors. She had got breakfast and milked one cow and dressed four boys thatmorning, and she felt as if she had earned the right to dance in a hazeof anything. The sunlight quivered in through the blinds. The leaves ofthe yellow maple drifted by on the fresh, strong wind. The church-bellsrang out like gold. All the world was happy. 

"Charlotte!" Her mother bustled out of the "keeping-room" with her haton. "I've changed my mind, Sharley, and feel so much better I believe Iwill go to church. I'll take Methuselah, but Nate and Moppet had betterstay at home with the baby. The last time I took Moppet he fired threehymn-books at old Mrs. Perkins, --right into the crown of her bonnet, andin the long prayer, too. That child will be the death of me some day. Iguess you'll get along with him, and the baby isn't quite as cross as hewas yesterday. You'd just as lief go in the afternoon, I suppose? Pinmy shawl on the shoulder, please. "

But Sharley, half-way down the stairs, stood still. She was no saint, this disappointed little girl. Her face, in the new fall hat, flushedangrily and her hands dropped. 

"O mother! I did want to go! You're always keeping me at home forsomething. I did _want_ to go!"--and rushed up stairs noisily, like achild, and slammed her door. 

"Dear me!" said her mother, putting on her spectacles to look afterher, --"dear me! what a temper! I'm sure I don't see what difference itmakes to her which half of the day she goes. Last Sunday she must go inthe afternoon, and wouldn't hear of anything else. Well, there's noaccounting for girls! Come, Methuselah. "

_Is_ there not any "accounting for girls, " my dear madam? What is thematter with those mothers, that they cannot see? Just as if it nevermade any difference to them which half of the day they went to church!Well, well! we are doing it, all of us, as fast as we can, --going theway of all the earth, digging little graves for our young sympathies, one by one, covering them up close. It grows so long since goldenmornings and pretty new bonnets and the sweet consciousness of watchingeyes bounded life for us! We have dreamed our dreams; we have learnedthe long lesson of our days; we are stepping on into the shadows. Oureyes see that ye see not; our ears hear that which ye have notconsidered. We read your melodious story through, but we have read otherstories since, and only its _haec fabula docet_ remains very fresh. Youwill be as obtuse as we are some day, young things! It is not neglect;it is not disapproval, --we simply forget. But from such forgetfulnessmay the good Lord graciously deliver us, one and all!

There! I fancy that I have made for Mrs. Guest--sitting meantime in hercushioned pew (directly behind Halcombe Dike), and comfortably lookingover the "Watts and Select" with Methuselah--a better defence than evershe could have made for herself. Between you and me, girls, --though youneed not tell your mother, --I think it is better than she deserves. 

Sharley, upstairs, had slammed her door and locked it, and was pacinghotly back and forth across her room. Poor Sharley! Sun and moon andstars were darkened; the clouds had returned after the rain. She toreoff the new hat and Sunday things savagely; put on her oldchocolate-colored morning-dress, with a grim satisfaction in makingherself as ugly as possible; pulled down the ribboned chignon which shehad braided, singing, half an hour ago (her own, that chignon); screwedher hair under a net into the most unbecoming little pug of which it wascapable, and went drearily down stairs. Nate, enacting the cheerfuldrama of "Jeff Davis on a sour apple-tree, " hung from the balusters, purple, gasping, tied to the verge of strangulation by the energeticMoppet. The baby was calmly sitting in the squash-pies. 

Halcombe Dike, coming home from church that morning a little in advanceof the crowd, saw a "Pre-raphaelite" in the doorway of Mr. Guest's barn, and quietly unlatching the gate came nearer to examine it. It was worthexamining. There was a ground of great shadows and billowy hay; a pileof crimson apples struck out by the light through a crack; two childrenand a kitten asleep together in a sunbeam; a girl on the floor with ababy crawling over her; a girl in a chocolate-colored dress with yellowleaves in her hair, --her hair upon her shoulders, and her eyelashes wet. 

"Well, Sharley!"

She looked up to see him standing there with his grave, amused smile. Her first thought was to jump and run; her second, to stand fire. 

"Well, Mr. Halcombe! Moppet's stuck yellow leaves all over me; my hair'sdown; I've got on a horrid old morning-dress; look pretty to seecompany, don't I?"

"Very, Sharley. "

"Besides, " said Sharley, "I've been crying, and my eyes are red. "

"So I see. "

"No, you don't, for I'm not looking at you. "

"But I am looking at you. "

"Oh!"

"What were you crying about, Sharley!"

"Because my grandmother's dead, " said Sharley, after some reflection. 

"Ah, yes, I remember! about '36, I think, her tombstone gives as thedate of that sad event?"

"I think it's wicked in people to laugh at people's dead grandmothers, "said Sharley, severely. "You ought to be at church. "

"So I was. "

"I wasn't; mother wouldn't--" But her lip quivered, and she stopped. Thememory of the new hat and Sunday dress, of the golden church-bells, andhush of happy Sabbath-morning thoughts came up. That he should see hernow, in this plight, with her swollen eyes and pouting lips, and herheart full of wicked discontent!

"Wouldn't what, Sharley?"

"_Don't!_" she pleaded, with a sob; "I'm cross; I can't talk. Besides, Ishall cry again, and I _won't_ cry again. You may let me alone, or youmay go away. If you don't go away you may just tell me what you havebeen doing with yourself this whole long summer. Working hard, ofcourse. I don't see but that everybody has to work hard in this world! Ihate this world! I suppose you're a rich man by this time?"

The young man looked at the chocolate dress, the yellow leaves, thefalling hair, and answered gravely, --a little coldly, Sharleythought, --that his prospects were not encouraging just now. Perhaps theynever had been encouraging; only that he in his young ardor had thoughtso. He was older now, and wiser. He understood what a hard pull wasbefore young architects in America, --any young architect, the best ofyoung architects, --and whether there was a place for him remained to beproved. He was willing to work hard, and to hope long; but he grew alittle tired of it sometimes, and so--He checked himself suddenly. "Asif, " thought Sharley, "he were tired of talking so long to me! Hethought my question impertinent. " She hid her face in her drooping hair, and wished herself a mile away. 

"There was something you once told me about some sort of buildings?" sheventured, timidly, in a pause. 

"The Crumpet Buildings. Yes, I sent my proposals, but have not heardfrom them yet; I don't know that I ever shall. That is a large affair, rather. The name of the thing would be worth a good deal to me if Isucceeded. It would give me a start, and--"

"Ough!" exclaimed Sharley. She had been sitting at his feet, with herface raised, and red eyes forgotten, when, splash! an icy stream ofwater came into her eyes, into her mouth, down her neck, up her sleeves. She gasped, and stood drenched. 

"O, it's only a rain-storm, " said Moppet, appearing on the scene withhis empty dipper. "I got tired of sleeping. I dreamed about threegiants. I didn't like it. I wanted something to do. It's only _my_rain-storm, and you needn't mind it, you know. "

Dripping Sharley's poor little temper, never of the strongest, quiveredto its foundations. She took hold of Moppet without any observation, andshook him just about as hard as she could shake. When she came to hersenses her mother was coming in at the gate, and Halcombe Dike was gone. 

 * * * * *

"I s'pose I've got to 'tend to that hollering to-night, " said Moppet, with a gentle sigh. 

This was at a quarter past seven. Nate and Methuselah were in bed. Thebaby was asleep. Moppet had thrown his shoes into the water-pitcher buttwice, and run down stairs in his nightgown only four times thatevening; and Sharley felt encouraged. Perhaps, after all, he would bestill by half past seven; and by half past seven--If Halcombe Dike didnot come to-night, something was the matter. Sharley decided this with asharp little nod. 

She had devoted herself to Moppet with politic punctiliousness. Would helie at his lazy length, with his feet on her clean petticoat, while shebent and puzzled over his knotted shoestrings? Very well. Did he signifya desire to pull her hair down and tickle her till she gasped? She wasat his service. Should he insist upon being lulled to slumber by therecounted adventures of Old Mother Hubbard, Red Riding-Hood, and TommyTucker? Not those exactly, it being thought proper to keep him in atheologic mood of mind till after sundown, but he should have David andGoliath and Moses in the bulrushes with pleasure; then Moses and Goliathand David again; after that, David and Goliath and Moses, by way ofvariety. She conducted every Scriptural dog and horse of heracquaintance entirely round the globe in a series of somewhat apocryphaladventures. She ransacked her memory for biblical boys, but these metwith small favor. "Pooh! _they_ weren't any good! They couldn't playstick-knife and pitch-in. Besides, they all died. Besides, they weren'tany great shakes. Jack the Giant-Killer was worth a dozen of 'em, sir!Now tell it all over again, or else I won't say my prayers till nextwinter!"

After some delicate plotting, Sharley manoeuvred him through "Now I layme, " and tucked him up, and undertook a little Sunday-night catechizing, conscientiously enough. 

"Has Moppet been a good boy to-day?"

"Well, that's a pretty question! Course I have!"

"But have you had any good thoughts, dear, you know?"

"O yes, lots of 'em! been thinking about Blessingham. "

"Who? O, Absalom!"

"O yes, I've been thinking about Blessingham, you know; how he must havelooked dreadful funny hanging up there onto his hair, with all the darts'n things stickin' into him! _Would_n't you like to seen him! No, youneedn't go off, 'cause I ain't begun to be asleep yet. "

Time and twilight were creeping on together. Sharley was sure that shehad heard the gate shut, and that some one sat talking with her motherupon the front doorsteps. 

"O Moppet! _Could_n't you go to sleep without me this one night, --notthis one night?" and the hot, impatient tears came in the dark. 

"O no, " said immovable Moppet, "of course I can't; and I 'spect I'mgoing to lie awake all night too. You'd ought to be glad to stay withyour little brothers. The girl in my library-book, she was glad, anyhow. "

Sharley threw herself back in the rocking-chair and let her eyes brimover. She could hear the voices on the doorsteps plainly; her mother'swiry tones and the visitor's; it was a man's voice, low and lessfrequent. Why did not her mother call her? Had not he asked to see her?Had he not? Would nobody ever come up to take her place? Would Moppetnever go to sleep? There he was peering at her over the top of thesheet, with two great, mischievous, wide-awake eyes. And time andtwilight were wearing on. 

Let us talk about "affliction" with our superior, reproving smile!Graves may close and hearts may break, fortunes, hopes, and souls beruined, but Moppet wouldn't go to sleep; and Sharley in herrocking-chair doubted her mother's love, the use of life, and thebenevolence of God. 

"I'm lying awake to think about Buriah, " observed Moppet, pleasantly. "David wanted to marry Buriah's wife. She was a very nice woman. "

Silence followed this announcement. 

"Sharley? you needn't think I'm asleep, --any such thing. Besides, if yougo down you'd better believe I'll holler! See here: s'pose I'd slung mydipper at Hal Dike, jest as David slung the stone at Go-li--"

Another silence. Encouraged, Sharley dried her tears and crept half-wayacross the floor. Then a board creaked. 

"O Sharley! Why don't people shut their eyes when they die? Why, JimSnow's dorg, he didn't. I punched a frog yesterday. I want a drink ofwater. "

Sharley resigned herself in despair to her fate. Moppet lay broad andbright awake till half past eight. The voices by the door grew silent. Steps sounded on the walk. The gate shut. 

"That child has kept me up with him the whole evening long, " saidSharley, coming sullenly down. "You didn't even come and speak to him, mother. I suppose Halcombe Dike never asked for me?"

"Halcombe Dike! Law! that wasn't Halcombe Dike. It was Deacon Snow, --theold Deacon, --come in to talk over the revival. Halcombe Dike was atmeeting, your father says, with his cousin Sue. Great interest up hisway, the Deacon says. There's ten had convictions since Conferencenight. I wish you were one of the interested, Sharley. "

But Sharley had fled. Fled away into the windy, moonless night, downthrough the garden, out into the sloping field. She ran back and forththrough the grass with great leaps, like a wounded thing. All her worryand waiting and disappointment, and he had not come! All the thrill andhope of her happy Sunday over and gone, and he had not come! All thewinter to live without one look at him, --and he knew it, and he wouldnot come!

"I don't care!" sobbed Sharley, like a defiant child, but threw up herhands with the worlds and wailed. It frightened her to hear the sound ofher own voice--such a pitiful, shrill voice--in the lonely place. Shebroke into her great leaps again, and so ran up and down the slope, andfelt the wind in her face. It drank her breath away from her after awhile; it was a keen, chilly wind. She sat down on a stone in the middleof the field, and it came over her that it was a cold, dark place to bein alone; and just then she heard her father calling her from the yard. So she stood up very slowly and walked back. 

"You'll catch your death!" fretted her mother, "running round bareheadedin all this damp. You know how much trouble you are when you are sick, too, and I think you ought to have more consideration for me, with allmy care. Going to bed? Be sure and not forget to put the baby's ginghamapron in the wash. "

Sharley lighted her kerosene lamp without reply. It was the littlekerosene with the crack in the handle. Some vague notion that everythingin the world had cracked came to her as she crept upstairs. She put herlamp out as soon as she was in her room, and locked her door hard. Shesat down on the side of the bed and crossed her hands, and waited forher father and mother to come upstairs. They came up by and by and wentto bed. The light that shone in through the chink under the door wentout. The house was still. 

She went over to the window then, threw it wide open, and sat downcrouched upon the broad sill. She did not sob now nor wail out. She didnot feel like sobbing or wailing. She only wanted to think; she mustthink, she had need to think. That this neglect of Halcombe Dike's meantsomething she did not try to conceal from her bitter thoughts. He hadnot neglected her in all his life before. It was not the habit, either, of this grave young man with the earnest eyes to do or not to do withouta meaning. He would put silence and the winter between them. That waswhat he meant. Sharley, looking out upon the windy dark withstraight-lidded eyes, knew that beneath and beyond the silence of thewinter lay the silence of a life. 

The silence of a life! The wind hushed into a moment's calm while thewords turned over in her heart. The branches of a cherry-tree, closeunder her sight, dropped lifelessly; a homesick bird gave a little, still, mournful chirp in the dark. Sharley gasped. 

"It's all because I shook Moppet! That's it. Because I shook Moppet thismorning. He used to like me, --yes, he did. He didn't know how cross andugly I am. No wonder he thought such a cross and ugly thing could neverbe--could never be--"

She broke off, crimson. "His wife?" She would have said the wordswithout blush or hesitation a week ago. Halcombe Dike had spoken no wordof love to her. But she had believed, purely and gravely, in the deepsof her maiden thought, that she was dear to him. Gravely and purely tooshe had dreamed that this October Sunday would bring some sign to her oftheir future. 

He had been toiling at that business in the city now a long while. Sharley knew nothing about business, but she had fancied that, eventhough his "prospects" were not good, he must be ready now to think of ahome of his own, --at least that he would give her some hope of it tokeep through the dreary, white winter. But he had given her nothing tokeep through the winter, or through any winter of a wintry life;nothing. The beautiful Sunday was over. He had come, and he had gone. She must brush away the pretty fancy. She must break the timid dream. So that grave, sweet word had died in shame upon her lips. She shouldnot be his wife. She should never be anybody's wife. 

The Sunday Night Express shrieked up the valley, and thundered by andaway in the dark. Sharley leaned far out into the wind to listen to thedying sound, and wondered what it would seem like to-morrow morning whenit carried him away. With its pause one of those sudden hushes fellagain upon the wind. The homesick bird fluttered about a little, huntingfor its nest. 

"Never to be his wife!" moaned Sharley. What did it mean? "Never to behis wife?" She pressed her hands up hard against her two temples, andconsidered:--

Moppet and the baby, and her mother's headaches; milking the cow, andkneading the bread, and darning the stockings; going to church in oldhats, --for what difference was it going to make to anybody now, whethershe trimmed them with Scotch plaid or sarcenet cambric?--coming home totalk over revivals with Deacon Snow, or sit down in a proper way, likeother old people, in the house with a lamp, and read Somebody's Life andLetters. Never any more moonlight, and watching, and strolling! Neverany more hoping, or wishing, or expecting, for Sharley. 

She jumped a little off her window-sill; then sat down again. That wasit. Moppet, and the baby, and her mother, and kneading, and milking, and darning, for thirty, for forty, for--the dear Lord, who pitied her, only knew how many years. 

But Sharley did not incline to think much about the Lord just then. Shewas very miserable, and very much alone and unhelped. So miserable, soalone and unhelped, that it never occurred to her to drop down rightthere with her despairing little face on the window-sill and tell Himall about it. O Sharley! did you not think He would understand?

She had made up her mind--decidedly made up her mind--not to go to sleepthat night. The unhappy girls in the novels always sit up, you know. Besides, she was too wretched to sleep. Then the morning train wentearly, at half past five, and she should stay here till it came. 

This was very good reasoning, and Sharley certainly was very unhappy, --asunhappy as a little girl of eighteen can well be; and I suppose itwould sound a great deal better to say that the cold morning looked inupon her sleepless pain, or that Aurora smiled upon her unrested eyes, or that she kept her bitter watch until the stars grew pale (and a finechance that would be to describe a sunrise too); but truth compels me tostate that she did what some very unhappy people have done beforeher, --found the window-sill uncomfortable, cramped, neuralgic, andcold, --so undressed and went to bed and to sleep, very much as she wouldhave done if there had been no Halcombe Dike in the world. Sharley wasnot used to lying awake, and Nature would not be cheated out of herrights in such a round, young, healthful little body. 

But that did not make her much the happier when she woke in the coldgray of the dawn to listen for the early train. It was very cold andvery gray, not time for the train yet, but she could not bear to liestill and hear the shrill, gay concert of the birds, to watch the daybegin, and think how many days must have beginning, --so she creptfaintly up and out into the chill. She wandered about for a time in theraw, brightening air. The frost lay crisp upon the short grass; theelder-bushes were festooned with tiny white tassels; the maple-leaveshung fretted with silver; the tangle of apple-trees and spruces waspowdered and pearled. She stole into it, as she had stolen into it inthe happy sunset-time so long ago--why! was it only day beforeyesterday?--stole in and laid her cheek up against the shining, wetvines, which melted warm beneath her touch, and shut her eyes. Shethought how she would like to shut and hide herself away in a placewhere she could never see the frescoed frost or brightening day, norhear the sound of chirping birds, nor any happy thing. 

By and by she heard the train coming, and footsteps. He came springingby in his strong, man's way as he had come before. As before, he passednear--how very near!--to the quivering white face crushed up against thevine-leaves, and went his way and knew nothing. 

The train panted and raced away, shrieked a little in a doleful, breathless fashion, grew small, grew less, grew dim, died from sight inpallid smoke. The track stood up on its mound of frozen bank, blank andmute, like a corpse from which the soul had fled. 

Sharley came into the kitchen at six o'clock. The fire was burning hotlyunder the boiler. The soiled clothes lay scattered about. Her motherstood over the tubs, red-faced and worried, complaining that Sharley hadnot come to help her. She turned, when the girl opened the door, toscold her a little. The best of mothers are apt to scold on Mondaymorning. 

Sharley stood still a moment and looked around. She must begin it with awashing-day then, this other life that had come to her. Her heart mightbreak; but the baby's aprons must be boiled--to-day, next week, anotherweek; the years stretched out into one wearisome, endless washing-day. O, the dreadful years! She grew a little blind and dizzy, sat down on aheap of table-cloths, and held up her arms. 

"Mother, don't be cross to me this morning, --_don't_ O mother, mother, mother! I wish there were anybody to help me!"

 * * * * *

The battle-fields of life lie in ambush. We trip along on our smilingway and they give no sign. We turn sharp corners where they hide inshadow. No drum-beat sounds alarum. It is the music and the dress-paradeto-night, the groaning and the blood to-morrow. 

Sharley had been little more than a child, in her unreasoning youngjoy, when she knotted the barbe at her throat on Saturday night. "I aman old woman now, " she said to herself on Monday morning. Not that hersaying so proved anything, --except, indeed, that it was her firsttrouble, and that she was very young to have a trouble. Yet, since shehad the notion, she might as well, to all intents and purposes, haveshrivelled into the caps and spectacles of a centenarian. "Imaginarygriefs _are_ real. " She took, indeed, a grim sort of pleasure inthinking that her youth had fled away, and forever, in thirty-six hours. 

However that might be, that October morning ushered Sharley uponbattle-ground; nor was the struggle the less severe that, she was soyoung and so unused to struggling. 

I have to tell of nothing new or tragic in the child's days; only of theold, slow, foolish pain that gnaws at the roots of things. Something wasthe matter with the sunsets and the dawns. Moonrise was an agony. Thebrown and golden grass had turned dull and dead. She would go away upgarret and sit with her fingers in her ears, that she might not hear thefrogs chanting in the swamp at twilight. 

One night she ran away from her father and mother. It chanced to be ananniversary of their wedding-day; they had kissed each other after teaand talked of old times and blushed a little, their married eyesoccupied and content with one another; she felt with a sudden, drearybitterness that she should not be missed, and so ran out into the fieldand sat down there on her stone in the dark. She rather hoped that theywould wonder where she was before bedtime. It would be a bit of comfort. She was so cold and comfortless. But nobody thought of her; and when shecame weakly up the yard at ten o'clock, the door was locked. 

For a week she went about her work like a sleepwalker. Her future wassettled. Life was over. Why make ado? The suns would set and the moonswould rise: let them; there would always be suns to set and moons torise. There were dinners to get and stockings to mend; there wouldalways be dinners to get and stockings to mend. She was put into theworld for the sake of dinners and stockings, apparently. Very well; shewas growing used to it; one could grow used to it. She put away thebarbe and the pink muslin, locked her ribbon-box into the lower drawer, gave up crimping her hair, and wore the chocolate calico all day. Shewent to the Thursday-evening conference, discussed the revival withDeacon Snow, and locked herself into her room one night to put the lampon the bureau before the glass and shake her soft hair down about hercolorless, inexpectant face, to see if it were not turning gray. She wasdisappointed to find it as brown and bright as ever. 

But Sharley was very young, and the sweet, persistent hopes of youthwere strong in her. They woke up presently with a sting like the stingof a frost-bite. 

"O, to think of being an old maid, in a little black silk apron, andhaving Halcombe Dike's wedding-cards laid upon a shelf!"

She was holding the baby when this "came all over her, " and she let himdrop into the coal-hod, and sat down to cry. 

What had she done that life should shut down before her in such cruelbareness? Was she not young, very young to be unhappy? She began tofight a little with herself and Providence in savage mood; favored thecrimped hair and Scotch plaids again, tried a nutting-party and asewing-circle, as well as a little flirtation with Jim Snow. This lastedfor another week. At the end of that time she went and sat down aloneone noon on a pile of kindlings in the wood-house, and thought it over. 

"Why, I can't!" her eyes widening with slow terror. "Happiness _won't_come. I _can't_ make it. I can't ever make it. And O, I'm just at thebeginning of everything!"

Somebody called her just then to peel the potatoes for dinner. Shethought--she thought often in those days--of that fancy of hers aboutcalico-living. Was not that all that was left for her? Little dreary, figures, all just alike, like the chocolate morning-dress? O, therose-bud and shimmer that might have been waiting somewhere! And O, therose-bud and shimmer that were forever gone!

The frosted golds of autumn melted into a clear, sharp, silveredwinter, carrying Sharley with them, round on her old routine. It nevergrew any the easier or softer. The girl's little rebellious feet trod itbitterly. She hated the darning and the sweeping and the baking and thedusting. She hated the sound of the baby's worried cry. She was tired ofher mother's illnesses, tired of Moppet's mischief, tired ofMethuselah's solemnity. She used to come in sometimes from her walk tothe office, on a cold, moonlight evening, and stand looking in at themall through the "keeping-room" window, --her father prosing over thestate of the flour-market, her mother on the lounge, the childrenwaiting for her to put them to bed; Methuselah poring over hisarithmetic in his little-old-mannish way; Moppet tying the baby and thekitten together, --stand looking till the hot, shamed blood shot to herforehead, for thought of how she was wearied of the sight. 

"I can't think what's got into Sharley, " complained her mother; "she hasbeen as cross as a bear this good while. If she were eight years old, instead of eighteen, I should give her a good whipping and send her tobed!"

Poor Sharley nursed her trouble and her crossness together, in heraggrieved, girlish way, till the light went out of her wistful eyes, andlittle sharp bones began to show at her wrists. She used to turn themabout and pity them. They were once so round and winsome!

Now it was probably a fact that, as for the matter of hard work, Sharley's life was a sinecure compared to what it would be as the wifeof Halcombe Dike. Double your toil into itself, and triple it by themeasure of responsibility, and there you have your married life, younggirls, --beautiful, dim Eden that you have made of it! But there wasnever an Eden without its serpent, I fancy. Besides, Sharley, like therest of them, had not thought as far as that. 

Then--ah then, what toil would not be play-day for the sake of HalcombeDike? what weariness and wear could be too great, what pain too keen, ifthey could bear it together?

O, you mothers! do you not see that this makes "a' the difference"? Youhave strength that your daughter knows not of. There are hands to helpyou over the thorns (if not, there ought to be). She gropes and cuts herway alone. Be very patient with her in her little moods andselfishnesses. No matter if she might help you more about the baby: bepatient. Her position in your home is at best an anomalous one, --a grownwoman, with much of the dependence of a child. She must have all thejars and tasks and frets of family life, without the relief ofhousewifely invention and authority. God and her own heart will teachher in time what she owes to you. Never fear for that. But bear longwith her. Do not exact too much. The life you give her did not come ather asking. Consider this well; and do not press the debt beyond itsdue. 

"I don't see that there is ever going to be any end to anything!"gasped Sharley at night between Moppet's buttons. 

This set her to thinking. What if one made an end?

She went out one cold, gray afternoon in the thick of a snow-storm andwandered up and down the railroad. It was easy walking upon thesleepers, the place was lonely, and she had come out to be alone. Sheliked the beat of the storm in her face for a while, the sharp turns ofthe wind, and the soft touch of the snow that was drifting in littleheaps about her feet. Then she remembered of how small use it was tolike anything in the world now, and her face grew as wild as the storm. 

Fancy yourself hemmed in with your direst grief by a drifting sleet insuch a voiceless, viewless place as that corpse-like track, --theendless, painless track, stretching away in the white mystery, at peace, like all dead things. 

What Sharley should have done was to go home as straight as she couldgo, put on dry stockings, and get her supper. What she did was tolinger, as all people linger, in the luxury of their firstwretchedness, --till the uncanny twilight fell and shrouded her in. Thena thought struck her. 

A freight-train was just coming in, slowly but heavily. Sharley, as shestepped aside to let it pass, fixed her eyes upon it for a moment, then, with a little hesitation, stopped to pick up a bit of iron that lay ather feet, --a round, firm rod-end, --and placed it diagonally upon therail. The cars rumbled by and over it. Sharley bent to see. It wascrushed to a shapeless twist. Her face whitened. She sat down andshivered a little. But she did not go home. The Evening Accommodationwas due now in about ten minutes. 

Girls, if you think I am telling a bit of sensational fiction, I wishyou would let me know. 

"It would be quick and easy, " thought Sharley. The man of whom she hadread in the Journal last night, --they said he must have found it allover in an instant. An instant was a very short time! And fortyyears, --and the little black silk apron, --and the cards laid up on ashelf! O, to go out of life, --anywhere, anyhow, out of life! No, theSixth Commandment had nothing to do with ending one's self!

An unearthly, echoing shriek broke through the noise of thestorm, --nothing is more unearthly than a locomotive in a storm. Sharleystood up, --sat down again. A red glare struck the white mist, broadened, brightened, grew. 

Sharley laid her head down with her small neck upon the rail, and--I amcompelled to say that she took it up again faster than she laid it down. Took it up, writhed off the track, tumbled down the banking, hid herface in a drift, and crouched there with the cold drops on her face tillthe hideous, tempting thing shot by. 

"I guess con-sumption would be--a--little better!" she decided, crawling to her feet. 

But the poor little feet could scarcely carry her. She struggled to thestreet, caught at the fences for a while, then dropped. 

Somebody stumbled over her. It was Cousin Sue--Halcombe Dike's CousinSue. 

"Deary me!" she said; and being five feet seven, with strong Yankee armsof her own, she took Sharley up in them, and carried her to the house asif she had been a baby. 

Sharley did not commit the atrocity of fainting, but found herselfthoroughly chilled and weak. Cousin Sue bustled about with brandy andblankets, and Sharley, watching her through her half-closed eyes, speculated a little. Had _she_ anybody's wedding-cards laid up on ashelf? She had the little black apron at any rate. Poor Cousin Sue!Should she be like that? "Poor Cousin Charlotte!" people would say. 

Cousin Sue had gone to see about supper when Sharley opened her eyes andsat strongly up. A gentle-faced woman sat between her and the light, ina chair cushioned upon one side for a useless arm. Halcombe had madethat chair. Mrs. Dike had been a busy, cheery woman, and Sharley hadalways felt sorry for her since the sudden day when paralysis crippledher good right hand; three years ago that was now; but she was not oneof those people to whom it comes natural to say that one is sorry forthem, and she was Halcombe's mother, and so Sharley had never said it. It struck her freshly now that this woman had seen much ill-fortune inher widowed years, and that she had kept a certain brave, contented lookin her eyes through it all. 

It struck her only as a passing thought, which might never have comeback had not Mrs. Dike pushed her chair up beside her, and given her along, quiet look straight in the eyes. 

"It was late for you to be out in the storm, my dear, and alone. "

"I'd been out a good while. I had been on--the track, " said Sharley, with a slight shiver. "I think I could not have been exactly well. Iwould not go again. I must go home now. But oh"--her voice sinking--"Iwish nobody had found me, I wish nobody had found me! The snow wouldhave covered me up, you see. "

She started up flushing hot and frightened. What had she been saying toHalcombe's mother?

But Halcombe's mother put her healthy soft hand down on the girl's shutfingers. Women understand each other in flashes. 

"My dear, " she said, without prelude or apology, "I have a thing to sayto you. God does not give us our troubles to think about; that's all. Ihave lived more years than you. I know that He never gives us ourtroubles to think about. "

"I don't know who's going to think about them if we don't!" saidSharley, half aggrieved. 

"Supposing nobody thinks of them, where's the harm done? Mark my words, child: He sends them to drive us out of ourselves, --to _drive_ us out. He had much rather we would go of our own accord, but if we won't go wemust be sent, for go we must. That's just about what we're put into thisworld for, and we're not fit to go out of it till we have found thisout. "

Now the moralities of conversation were apt to glide off from Sharleylike rain-drops from gutta-percha, and I cannot assert that these wordswould have made profound impression upon her had not Halcombe Dike'smother happened to say them. 

Be that as it may, she certainly took them home with her, and ponderedthem in her heart; pondered till late in her feverish, sleepless night, till her pillow grew wet, and her heart grew still. About midnight shejumped out into the cold, and kneeled, with her face hidden in the bed. 

"O, I've been a naughty girl!" she said, just as she might have said itten years ago. She felt so small, and ignorant, and weak that night. 

Out of such smallness, and ignorance, and weakness great knowledge andstrength may have beautiful growth. They came in time to Sharley, but itwas a long, slow time. Moppet was just as unendurable, the baby just asfretful, life just as joyless, as if she had taken no new outlook uponit, made no new, tearful plans about it. 

"Calico! calico!" she cried out a dozen times a day; "nothing _but_calico!"

But by and by it dawned in her thoughts that this was a very littlematter to cry out about. What if God meant that some lives should be"all just alike, " and like nothing fresh or bonnie, and that hers shouldbe one? That was his affair. Hers was to use the dull gray gift hegave--_whatever_ gift he gave--as loyally and as cheerily as she woulduse treasures of gold and rose-tint. He knew what he was doing. What hedid was never forgetful or unkind. She felt--after a long time, and in aquiet way--that she could be sure of that. 

No matter about Halcombe Dike, and what was gone. No matter about thelittle black aprons, and what was coming. He understood all about that. He would take care of it. 

Meantime, why could she not as well wash Moppet's face with a pleasantword as with a cross one? darn the stockings with a smile as well as afrown? stay and hear her mother discuss her headaches as well as runaway and think of herself? Why not give happiness since she could nothave it? be of use since nobody was of much use to her? Easier sayingthan doing, to be sure, Sharley found; but she kept the idea in mind asthe winter wore away. 

She was thinking about it one April afternoon, when she had stolen outof the house for a walk in the budding woods. She had need enough of awalk. It was four weeks now since she had felt the wide wind upon herface; four weeks pleasantly occupied in engineering four boys throughthe measles; and if ever a sick child had the capacity for making ofhimself a seraph upon earth it was Moppet. It was a thin little facewhich stood out against the "green mist" of the unfurling leaves asSharley wandered in and out with sweet aimlessness among the elms andhickories; very thin, with its wistful eyes grown hollow; a shadow ofthe old Sharley who fluttered among the plaid ribbons one Octobermorning. It was a saddened face--it might always be a saddened face--buta certain pleasant, rested look had worked its way about her mouth, notunlike the rich mellowness of a rainy sunset. Not that Sharley knew muchabout sunsets yet; but she thought she did, which, as I said before, amounts to about the same thing. 

She was thinking with a wee glow of pleasure how the baby's arms clungaround her neck that morning, and how surprised her mother looked whenMethuselah cried at her taking this walk. As you were warned in thebeginning, nothing remarkable ever happened to Sharley. Since she hadbegun in practice to approve Mrs. Dike's theory, that no harm is done ifwe never think of our troubles, she had neither become the village idol, nor in any remarkable degree her mother's pride. But she hadnevertheless cut for herself a small niche in the heart of her home, --amuch larger niche, perhaps, than the excellent Mrs. Guest was well awareof. 

"I don't care how small it is, " cried Sharley, "as long as I have roomto put my two feet on and look up. "

And for that old pain? Ah, well, God knew about that, andSharley, --nobody else. Whatever the winter had taught her she had boundand labelled in her precise little way for future use. At least she hadlearned--and it is not everybody who learns it at eighteen, --to wear herlife bravely--"a rose with a golden thorn. "

I really think that this is the place to end my story, so properlypolished off with a moral. So many Sharleys, too, will never readbeyond. But being bound in honor to tell the whole moral or no moral, Imust add, that while Sharley walked and thought among her hickoriesthere came up a thunder-storm. It fell upon her without any warning. Thesky had been clear when she looked at it last. It gaped at her now outof the throats of purple-black clouds. Thunders crashed over and abouther. All the forest darkened and reeled. Sharley was enough like othergirls to be afraid of a thunder-storm. She started with a cry to breakher way through the matted undergrowth; saw, or felt that she saw, theglare of a golden arrow overhead; threw out her hands, and fell crushed, face downward, at the foot of a scorched tree. 

When she opened her eyes she was sitting under a wood-pile. Or, tospeak more accurately, she was sitting in Mr. Halcombe Dike's lap, andMr. Halcombe Dike was under the wood-pile. 

It was a low, triangular wood-pile, roofed with pine boards, throughwhich the water was dripping. It stood in the centre of a largeclearing, exposed to the rain, but safe. 

"Oh!" said Sharley. 

"That's right, " said he, "I knew you were only stunned. I've beenrubbing your hands and feet. It was better to come here than to run theblockade of that patch of woods to a house. Don't try to talk. "

"I'm not, " said Sharley, with a faint little laugh, "it's you that aretalking"; and ended with a weak pause, her head falling back where shehad found it, upon his arm. 

"I _wouldn't_ talk, " repeated the young man, relevantly, after aprofound silence of five minutes. "I was coming 'across lots' from thestation. You fell--Sharley, you fell right at my feet!"

He spoke carelessly, but Sharley, looking up, saw that his face waswhite. 

"I believe I will get down, " she observed, after some consideration, lifting her head. 

"I don't see how you can, you know, " he suggested, helplessly; "it poursas straight as a deluge out there. There isn't room in this place fortwo people to sit. "

So they "accepted the situation. "

The clouds broke presently, and rifts of yellow light darted in throughthe fragrant, wet pine boards. Sharley's hair had fallen from her netand covered her face. She felt too weak to push it away. After somethought Halcombe Dike pushed it away for her, reverently, with hisstrong, warm hand. The little white, trembling face shone out. He turnedand looked at it--the poor little face!--looked at it gravely and long. 

But Sharley, at the look, sat up straight. Her heart leaped out into theyellow light. All her dreary winter danced and dwindled away. Throughthe cracks in the pine boards a long procession of May-days came filingin. The scattering rain-drops flamed before her. "All the world and allthe waters blushed and bloomed. " She was so very young!

"I could not speak, " he told her quietly, "when I was at home before. Icould never speak till now. Last October I thought"--his voice sinkinghoarsely--"I thought, Sharley, it could never be. I could barely eke outmy daily bread; I had no right to ask you--to bind you. You were veryyoung; I thought, perhaps, Sharley, you might forget. Somebody elsemight make you happier. I would not stand in the way of your happiness. I asked God to bless you that morning when I went away in the cars, Sharley. Sharley!"

Something in her face he could not understand. All that was meant bythe upturned face perhaps he will never understand. She hid it in herbright, brown hair; put her hand up softly upon his cheek and cried. 

"If you would like to hear anything about the business part of it--"suggested the young man, clearing his throat. But Sharley "hatedbusiness. " She would not hear. 

"Not about the Crumpet Buildings? Well, I carried that affairthrough, --that's all. "

They came out under the wide sky, and walked home hand in hand. All theworld was hung with crystals. The faint shadow of a rainbow quiveredacross a silver cloud. 

The first thing that Sharley did when she came home was to find Moppetand squeeze him. 

"O Moppet, we can be good girls all the same if we are happy, can't we?"

"No, sir!" said injured Moppet. "You don't catch me!"

"But O Moppet, see the round drops hanging and burning on the blinds!And how the little mud-puddles shine, Moppet!"

Out of her pain and her patience God had brought her beautiful answer. It was well for Sharley. But if such answer had not come? That alsowould have been well. 

Kentucky's Ghost. 

True? Every syllable. 

That was a very fair yarn of yours, Tom Brown, very fair for a landsman, but I'll bet you a doughnut I can beat it; and all on the square, too, as I say, --which is more, if I don't mistake, than you could take oathto. Not to say that I never stretched my yarn a little on the fo'castlein my younger days, like the rest of 'em; but what with living underroofs so long past, and a call from the parson regular in strawberrytime, and having to do the flogging consequent on the inakkeracies ofstatement follering on the growing up of six boys, a man learns to trimhis words a little, Tom, and no mistake. It's very much as it is withthe talk of the sea growing strange to you from hearing nothing butlubbers who don't know a mizzen-mast from a church-steeple. 

It was somewhere about twenty years ago last October, if I recollectfair, that we were laying in for that particular trip to Madagascar. I've done that little voyage to Madagascar when the sea was like so muchburning oil, and the sky like so much burning brass, and the fo'castleas nigh a hell as ever fo'castle was in a calm; I've done it when wecame sneaking into port with nigh about every spar gone and pumps goingnight and day; and I've done it with a drunken captain on starvationrations, --duff that a dog on land wouldn't have touched and twoteaspoonfuls of water to the day, --but someways or other, of all thetimes we headed for the East Shore I don't seem to remember any quite asdistinct as this. 

We cleared from Long Wharf in the ship Madonna, --which they tell memeans, My Lady, and a pretty name it was; it was apt to give me thatgentle kind of feeling when I spoke it, which is surprising when youconsider what a dull old hull she was, never logging over ten knots, anduncertain at that. It may have been because of Moll's coming down oncein a while in the days that we lay at dock, bringing the boy with her, and sitting up on deck in a little white apron, knitting. She was a verygood-looking woman, was my wife, in those days, and I felt proud ofher, --natural, with the lads looking on. 

"Molly, " I used to say, sometimes, --"Molly Madonna!"

"Nonsense!" says she, giving a clack to her needles, --pleased enoughthough, I warrant you, and turning a very pretty pink about the cheeksfor a four-years' wife. Seeing as how she was always a lady to me, and atrue one, and a gentle, though she wasn't much at manners orbook-learning, and though I never gave her a silk gown in her life, shewas quite content, you see, and so was I. 

I used to speak my thought about the name sometimes, when the ladsweren't particularly noisy, but they laughed at me mostly. I was roughenough and bad enough in those days; as rough as the rest, and as bad asthe rest, I suppose, but yet I seemed to have my notions a littledifferent from the others. "Jake's poetry, " they called 'em. 

We were loading for the East Shore trade, as I said, didn't I? Thereisn't much of the genuine, old-fashioned trade left in these days, except the whiskey branch, which will be brisk, I take it, till theMalagasy carry the prohibitory law by a large majority in both houses. We had a little whiskey in the hold, I remember, that trip, with a goodstock of knives, red flannel, handsaws, nails, and cotton. We werehoping to be at home again within the year. We were well provisioned, and Dodd, --he was the cook, --Dodd made about as fair coffee as you'relikely to find in the galley of a trader. As for our officers, when Isay the less said of them the better, it ain't so much that I mean to bedisrespectful as that I mean to put it tenderly. Officers in themerchant service, especially if it happens to be the African service, are brutal men quite as often as they ain't (at least, that's myexperience; and when some of your great ship-owners argue the case withme, --as I'm free to say they have done before now, --I say, "That's_my_ experience, sir, " which is all I've got to say);--brutal men, andabout as fit for their positions as if they'd been imported for thepurpose a little indirect from Davy Jones's Locker. Though they do saythat the flogging is pretty much done away with in these days, whichmakes a difference. 

Sometimes on a sunshiny afternoon, when the muddy water showed a littlemuddier than usual, on account of the clouds being the color of silver, and all the air the color of gold, when the oily barrels were knockingabout on the wharves, and the smells were strong from the fish-houses, and the men shouted and the mates swore, and our baby ran about decka-play with everybody (he was a cunning little chap with red stockingsand bare knees, and the lads took quite a shine to him), "Jake, " hismother would say, with a little sigh, --low, so that the captain neverheard, --"think if it was _him_ gone away for a year in company the likeof that!"

Then she would drop her shining needles, and call the little fellow backsharp, and catch him up into her arms. 

Go into the keeping-room there, Tom, and ask her all about it. Blessyou! she remembers those days at dock better than I do. She could tellyou to this hour the color of my shirt, and how long my hair was, andwhat I ate, and how I looked, and what I said. I didn't generally swearso thick when she was about. 

Well; we weighed, along the last of the month, in pretty good spirits. The Madonna was as stanch and seaworthy as any eight-hundred-tonner inthe harbor, if she was clumsy; we turned in, some sixteen of us orthereabouts, into the fo'castle, --a jolly set, mostly old messmates, andwell content with one another; and the breeze was stiff from the west, with a fair sky. 

The night before we were off, Molly and I took a walk upon the wharvesafter supper. I carried the baby. A boy, sitting on some boxes, pulledmy sleeve as we went by, and asked me, pointing to the Madonna, if Iwould tell him the name of the ship. 

"Find out for yourself, " said I, not over-pleased to be interrupted. 

"Don't be cross to him, " says Molly. The baby threw a kiss at the boy, and Molly smiled at him through the dark. I don't suppose I should everhave remembered the lubber from that day to this, except that I likedthe looks of Molly smiling at him through the dark. 

My wife and I said good-by the next morning in a little sheltered placeamong the lumber on the wharf; she was one of your women who never liketo do their crying before folks. 

She climbed on the pile of lumber and sat down, a little flushed andquivery, to watch us off. I remember seeing her there with the baby tillwe were well down the channel. I remember noticing the bay as it grewcleaner, and thinking that I would break off swearing; and I remembercursing Bob Smart like a pirate within an hour. 

The breeze held steadier than we'd looked for, and we'd made a goodoffing and discharged the pilot by nightfall. Mr. Whitmarsh--he was themate--was aft with the captain. The boys were singing a little; thesmell of the coffee was coming up, hot and home-like, from the galley. Iwas up in the maintop, I forget what for, when all at once there came acry and a shout; and, when I touched deck, I saw a crowd around thefore-hatch. 

"What's all this noise for?" says Mr. Whitmarsh, coming up and scowling. 

"A stow-away, sir! A boy stowed away!" said Bob, catching the officer'stone quick enough. Bob always tested the wind well, when a storm wasbrewing. He jerked the poor fellow out of the hold, and pushed him alongto the mate's feet. 

I say "poor fellow, " and you'd never wonder why if you'd seen as much ofstowing away as I have. 

I'd as lief see a son of mine in a Carolina slave-gang as to see himlead the life of a stow-away. What with the officers from feeling thatthey've been taken in, and the men, who catch their cue from theirsuperiors, and the spite of the lawful boy who hired in the proper way, he don't have what you may call a tender time. 

This chap was a little fellow, slight for his years, which might havebeen fifteen, I take it. He was palish, with a jerk of thin hair on hisforehead. He was hungry, and homesick, and frightened. He looked abouton all our faces, and then he cowered a little, and lay still just asBob had thrown him. 

"We--ell, " says Whitmarsh, very slow, "if you don't repent your bargainbefore you go ashore, my fine fellow, --me, if I'm mate of theMadonna! and take that for your pains!"

Upon that he kicks the poor little lubber from quarter-deck to bowsprit, or nearly, and goes down to his supper. The men laugh a little, thenthey whistle a little, then they finish their song quite gay and wellacquainted, with the coffee steaming away in the galley. Nobody has aword for the boy, --bless you, no!

I'll venture he wouldn't have had a mouthful that night if it had notbeen for me; and I can't say as I should have bothered myself about him, if it had not come across me sudden, while he sat there rubbing his eyesquite violent, with his face to the west'ard (the sun was settingreddish), that I had seen the lad before; then I remembered walking onthe wharves, and him on the box, and Molly saying softly that I wascross to him. 

Seeing that my wife had smiled at him, and my baby thrown a kiss at him, it went against me, you see, not to look after the little rascal a bitthat night. 

"But you've got no business here, you know, " said I; "nobody wants you. "

"I wish I was ashore!" said he, --"I wish I was ashore!"

With that he begins to rub his eyes so very violent that I stopped. There was good stuff in him too; for he choked and winked at me, anddid it all up, about the sun on the water and a cold in the head, aswell as I could myself just about. 

I don't know whether it was on account of being taken a little notice ofthat night, but the lad always kind of hung about me afterwards; chasedme round with his eyes in a way he had, and did odd jobs for me withoutthe asking. 

One night before the first week was out, he hauled alongside of me onthe windlass. I was trying a new pipe (and a very good one, too), so Ididn't give him much notice for a while. 

"You did this job up shrewd, Kent, " said I, by and by; "how did yousteer in?"--for it did not often happen that the Madonna got fairly outof port with a boy unbeknown in her hold. 

"Watch was drunk; I crawled down ahind the whiskey. It was hot, you bet, and dark. I lay and thought how hungry I was, " says he. 

"Friends at home?" says I. 

Upon that he gives me a nod, very short, and gets up and walks offwhistling. 

The first Sunday out that chap didn't know any more what to do withhimself than a lobster just put on to boil. Sunday's cleaning day atsea, you know. The lads washed up, and sat round, little knots of them, mending their trousers. Bob got out his cards. Me and a few mates tookit comfortable under the to'gallant fo'castle (I being on watch below), reeling off the stiffest yarns we had in tow. Kent looked on at euchreawhile, then listened to us awhile, then walked about uneasy. 

By and by says Bob, "Look over there, --spry!" and there was Kent, sitting curled away in a heap under the stern of the long-boat. He had abook. Bob crawls behind and snatches it up, unbeknown, out of his hands;then he falls to laughing as if he would strangle, and gives the book atoss to me. It was a bit of Testament, black and old. There was writingon the yellow leaf, this way:--

 "Kentucky Hodge, from his Affecshunate mother who prays, For you evry day, Amen, "

The boy turned first red, then white, and straightened up quite sudden, but he never said a word, only sat down again and let us laugh it out. I've lost my reckoning if he ever heard the last of it. He told me oneday how he came by the name, but I forget exactly. Something about anold fellow--uncle, I believe--as died in Kentucky, and the name wasmoniment-like, you see. He used to seem cut up a bit about it at first, for the lads took to it famously; but he got used to it in a week ortwo, and, seeing as they meant him no unkindness, took it quite cheery. 

One other thing I noticed was that he never had the book about afterthat. He fell into our ways next Sunday more easy. 

They don't take the Bible just the way you would, Tom, --as a generalthing, sailors don't; though I will say that I never saw the man at seawho didn't give it the credit of being an uncommon good yarn. 

But I tell you, Tom Brown, I felt sorry for that boy. It's punishmentbad enough for a little scamp like him leaving the honest shore, andfolks to home that were a bit tender of him maybe, to rough it on atrader, learning how to slush down a back-stay, or tie reef-points withfrozen fingers in a snow-squall. 

But that's not the worst of it, by no means. If ever there was acold-blooded, cruel man, with a wicked eye and a fist like a mallet, itwas Job Whitmarsh, taken at his best. And I believe, of all the tripsI've taken, him being mate of the Madonna, Kentucky found him at hisworst. Bradley--that's the second mate--was none too gentle in his ways, you may be sure; but he never held a candle to Mr. Whitmarsh. He took aspite to the boy from the first, and he kept it on a steady strain tothe last, right along, just about so. 

I've seen him beat that boy till the blood ran down in little pools ondeck; then send him up, all wet and red, to clear the to'sail halliards;and when, what with the pain and faintness, he dizzied a little, andclung to the ratlines, half blind, he would have him down and flog himtill the cap'n interfered, --which would happen occasionally on a fairday when he had taken just enough to be good-natured. He used to rackhis brains for the words he slung at the boy working quiet enoughbeside him. It was odd, now, the talk he would get off. Bob Smartcouldn't any more come up to it than I could: we used to try sometimes, but we had to give in always. If curses had been a marketable article, Whitmarsh would have taken out his patent and made his fortune byinventing of them, new and ingenious. Then he used to kick the lad downthe fo'castle ladder; he used to work him, sick or well, as he wouldn'thave worked a dray-horse; he used to chase him all about deck at therope's end; he used to mast-head him for hours on the stretch; he usedto starve him out in the hold. It didn't come in my line to beover-tender, but I turned sick at heart, Tom, more times than one, looking on helpless, and me a great stout fellow. 

I remember now--don't know as I've thought of it for twenty years--athing McCallum said one night; McCallum was Scotch, --an old fellow withgray hair; told the best yarns on the fo'castle always. 

"Mark my words, shipmates, " says he, "when Job Whitmarsh's time comes togo as straight to hell as Judas, that boy will bring his summons. Deador alive, that boy will bring his summons. "

One day I recollect especial that the lad was sick with fever on him, and took to his hammock. Whitmarsh drove him on deck, and ordered himaloft. I was standing near by, trimming the spanker. Kentucky staggeredfor'ard a little and sat down. There was a rope's-end there, knottedthree times. The mate struck him. 

"I'm very weak, sir, " says he. 

He struck him again. He struck him twice more. The boy fell over alittle, and lay where he fell. 

I don't know what ailed me, but all of a sudden I seemed to be lying offLong Wharf, with the clouds the color of silver, and the air the colorof gold, and Molly in a white apron with her shining needles, and thebaby a-play in his red stockings about the deck. 

"Think if it was him!" says she, or she seems to say, --"think if it was_him_!"

And the next I knew I'd let slip my tongue in a jiffy, and given it tothe mate that furious and onrespectful as I'll wager Whitmarsh never gotbefore. And the next I knew after that they had the irons on me. 

"Sorry about that, eh?" said he, the day before they took 'em off. 

"_No, _ sir, " says I. And I never was. Kentucky never forgot that. I hadhelped him occasional in the beginning, --learned him how to veer andhaul a brace, let go or belay a sheet, --but let him alone generallyspeaking, and went about my own business. That week in irons I reallybelieve the lad never forgot. 

One time--it was on a Saturday night, and the mate had been oncommonfurious that week--Kentucky turned on him, very pale and slow (I was upin the mizzen-top, and heard him quite distinct). 

"Mr. Whitmarsh, " says he, --"Mr. Whitmarsh, "--he draws his breathin, --"Mr. Whitmarsh, "--three times, --"you've got the power and you knowit, and so do the gentlemen who put you here; and I'm only a stow-awayboy, and things are all in a tangle, but _you'll be sorry yet for everytime you've laid your hands on me_!"

He hadn't a pleasant look about the eyes either, when he said it. 

Fact was, that first month on the Madonna had done the lad no good. Hehad a surly, sullen way with him, some'at like what I've seen about achained dog. At the first, his talk had been clean as my baby's, and hewould blush like any girl at Bob Smart's stories; but he got used toBob, and pretty good, in time, at small swearing. 

I don't think I should have noticed it so much if it had not been forseeming to see Molly, and the sun, and the knitting-needles, and thechild upon the deck, and hearing of it over, "Think if it was _him_!"Sometimes on a Sunday night I used to think it was a pity. Not that Iwas any better than the rest, except so far as the married men arealways steadier. Go through any crew the sea over, and it is the ladswho have homes of their own and little children in 'em as keep thestraightest. 

Sometimes, too, I used to take a fancy that I could have listened to aword from a parson, or a good brisk psalm-tune, and taken it in verygood part. A year is a long pull for twenty-five men to be becalmed witheach other and the devil. I don't set up to be pious myself, but I'mnot a fool, and I know that if we'd had so much as one officer aboardwho feared God and kept his commandments, we should have been the bettermen for it. It's very much with religion as it is with cayennepepper, --if it's there, you know it. 

If you had your ships on the sea by the dozen, you'd bethink you ofthat? Bless you, Tom! if you were in Rome you'd do as the Romans do. You'd have your ledgers, and your children, and your churches and Sundayschools, and freed niggers, and 'lections, and what not, and never stopto think whether the lads that sailed your ships across the world hadsouls, or not, --and be a good sort of man too. That's the way of theworld. Take it easy, Tom, --take it easy. 

Well, things went along just about so with us till we neared the Cape. It's not a pretty place, the Cape, on a winter's voyage. I can't say asI ever was what you may call scar't after the first time rounding it, but it's not a pretty place. 

I don't seem to remember much about Kent along there till there come aFriday at the first of December. It was a still day, with a little haze, like white sand sifted across a sunbeam on a kitchen table. The lad wasquiet-like all day, chasing me about with his eyes. 

"Sick?" says I. 

"No, " says he. 

"Whitmarsh drunk?" says I. 

"No, " says he. 

A little after dark I was lying on a coil of ropes, napping it. The boyswere having the Bay of Biscay quite lively, and I waked up on the jumpin the choruses. Kent came up while they were telling

 "How she lay On that day In the _Bay_ of BISCAY O!"

He was not singing. He sat down beside me, and first I thought Iwouldn't trouble myself about him, and then I thought I would. 

So I opens one eye at him encouraging. He crawls up a little closer tome. It was rather dark where we sat, with a great greenish shadowdropping from the mainsail. The wind was up a little, and the light athelm looked flickery and red. 

"Jake, " says he all at once, "where's your mother?"

"In--heaven!" says I, all taken aback; and if ever I came nigh what youmight call a little disrespect to your mother, it was on that occasion, from being taken so aback. 

"Oh!" said he. "Got any women-folks to home that miss you?" asks he, byand by. 

Said I, "Shouldn't wonder. "

After that he sits still a little with his elbows on his knees; then hespeers at me sidewise awhile; then said he, "I s'pose _I_'ve got amother to home. I ran away from her. "

This, mind you, is the first time he has ever spoke about his folkssince he came aboard. 

"She was asleep down in the south chamber, " says he. "I got out thewindow. There was one white shirt she'd made for meetin' and such. I'venever worn it out here. I hadn't the heart. It has a collar and somecuffs, you know. She had a headache making of it. She's been folleringme round all day, a sewing on that shirt. When I come in she would lookup bright-like and smiling. Father's dead. There ain't anybody but me. All day long she's been follering of me round. "

So then he gets up, and joins the lads, and tries to sing a little; buthe comes back very still and sits down. We could see the flickery lightupon the boys' faces, and on the rigging, and on the cap'n, who wasdamning the bo'sen a little aft. 

"Jake, " says he, quite low, "look here. I've been thinking. Do youreckon there's a chap here--just one, perhaps--who's said his prayerssince he came aboard?"

"_No!_" said I, quite short: for I'd have bet my head on it. 

I can remember, as if it was this morning, just how the questionsounded, and the answer. I can't seem to put it into words how it cameall over me. The wind was turning brisk, and we'd just eased her with afew reefs; Bob Smart, out furling the flying jib, got soaked; me and theboy sitting silent, were spattered. I remember watching the curve ofthe great swells, mahogany color, with the tip of white, and thinkinghow like it was to a big creature hissing and foaming at the mouth, andthinking all at once something about Him holding of the sea in abalance, and not a word bespoke to beg his favor respectful since weweighed our anchor, and the cap'n yonder calling on Him just that minuteto send the Madonna to the bottom, if the bo'sen hadn't disobeyed hisorders about the squaring of the after-yards. 

"From his Affecshunate mother who prays, For you evry day, Amen, "whispers Kentucky, presently, very soft. "The book's tore up. Mr. Whitmarsh wadded his old gun with it. But I remember. "

Then said he: "It's 'most bedtime to home. She's setting in a littlerocking-chair, --a green one. There's a fire, and the dog. She sets allby herself. "

Then he begins again: "She has to bring in her own wood now. There's agray ribbon on her cap. When she goes to meetin' she wears a graybunnet. She's drawed the curtains and the door is locked. But she thinksI'll be coming home sorry some day, --I'm sure she thinks I'll be cominghome sorry. "

Just then there comes the order, "Port watch ahoy! Tumble up therelively!" so I turns out, and the lad turns in, and the night settlesdown a little black, and my hands and head are full. Next day it blows aclean, all but a bank of gray, very thin and still, --about the size ofthat cloud you see through the side window, Tom, --which lay just abeamof us. 

The sea, I thought, looked like a great purple pincushion, with a mastor two stuck in on the horizon for the pins. "Jake's poetry, " the boyssaid that was. 

By noon that little gray bank had grown up thick, like a wall. Bysundown the cap'n let his liquor alone, and kept the deck. By night wewere in chop-seas, with a very ugly wind. 

"Steer small, there!" cries Whitmarsh, growing hot about the face, --forwe made a terribly crooked wake, with a broad sheer, and the old hullstrained heavily, --"steer small there, I tell you! Mind your eye now, McCallum, with your foresail! Furl the royals! Send down the royals!Cheerily, men! Where's that lubber Kent? Up with you, lively now!"

Kentucky sprang for'ard at the order, then stopped short. Anybody asknows a royal from an anchor wouldn't have blamed the lad. I'll takeoath to't it's no play for an old tar, stout and full in size, sendingdown the royals in a gale like that; let alone a boy of fifteen year onhis first voyage. 

But the mate takes to swearing (it would have turned a parson faint tohear him), and Kent shoots away up, --the great mast swinging like apendulum to and fro, and the reef-points snapping, and the blockscreaking, and the sails flapping to that extent as you wouldn'tconsider possible unless you'd been before the mast yourself. Itreminded me of evil birds I've read of, that stun a man with theirwings; strike _you_ to the bottom, Tom, before you could say JackRobinson. 

Kent stuck bravely as far as the cross-trees. There he slipped andstruggled and clung in the dark and noise awhile, then comes slidingdown the back-stay. 

"I'm not afraid, sir, " says he; "but I cannot do it. "

For answer Whitmarsh takes to the rope's-end. So Kentucky is up again, and slips and struggles and clings again, and then lays down again. 

At this the men begin to grumble a little low. 

"Will you kill the lad?" said I. I get a blow for my pains, that sendsme off my feet none too easy; and when I rub the stars out of my eyesthe boy is up again, and the mate behind him with the rope. Whitmarshstopped when he'd gone far enough. The lad climbed on. Once he lookedback. He never opened his lips; he just looked back. If I've seen himonce since, in my thinking, I've seen him twenty times, --up in theshadow of the great gray wings, a looking back. 

After that there was only a cry, and a splash, and the Madonna racingalong with the gale twelve knots. If it had been the whole crewoverboard, she could never have stopped for them that night. 

"Well, " said the cap'n, "you've done it now. "

Whitmarsh turns his back. 

By and by, when the wind fell, and the hurry was over, and I had thetime to think a steady thought, being in the morning watch, I seemed tosee the old lady in the gray bunnet setting by the fire. And the dog. And the green rocking-chair. And the front door, with the boy walking inon a sunny afternoon to take her by surprise. 

Then I remember leaning over to look down, and wondering if the lad werethinking of it too, and what had happened to him now, these two hoursback, and just about where he was, and how he liked his new quarters, and many other strange and curious things. 

And while I sat there thinking, the Sunday-morning stars cut through theclouds, and the solemn Sunday-morning light began to break upon the sea. 

We had a quiet run of it, after that, into port, where we lay about acouple of months or so, trading off for a fair stock of palm-oil, ivory, and hides. The days were hot and purple and still. We hadn't what youmight call a blow, if I recollect accurate, till we rounded the Capeagain, heading for home. 

We were rounding that Cape again, heading for home, when that happenedwhich you may believe me or not, as you take the notion, Tom; though whya man who can swallow Daniel and the lion's den, or take down t'otherchap who lived three days comfortable into the inside of a whale, shouldmake faces at what I've got to tell I can't see. 

It was just about the spot that we lost the boy that we fell upon theworst gale of the trip. It struck us quite sudden. Whitmarsh was alittle high. He wasn't apt to be drunk in a gale, if it gave him warningsufficient. 

Well, you see, there must be somebody to furl the main-royal again, andhe pitched onto McCallum. McCallum hadn't his beat for fighting out theroyal in a blow. 

So he piled away lively, up to the to'-sail yard. There, all of asudden, he stopped. Next we knew he was down like heat-lightning. 

His face had gone very white. 

"What's to pay with _you_?" roared Whitmarsh. 

Said McCallum, "_There's somebody up there, sir_. "

Screamed Whitmarsh, "You're gone an idiot!"

Said McCallum, very quiet and distinct: "There's somebody up there, sir. I saw him quite plain. He saw me. I called up. He called down. Says he, _'Don't you come up_!' and hang me if I'll stir a step for you or anyother man to-night!"

I never saw the face of any man alive go the turn that mate's face went. If he wouldn't have relished knocking the Scotchman dead before hiseyes, I've lost my guess. Can't say what he would have done to the oldfellow, if there'd been any time to lose. 

He'd the sense left to see there wasn't overmuch, so he orders out BobSmart direct. 

Bob goes up steady, with a quid in his cheek and a cool eye. Half-wayamid to'-sail and to'-gallant he stops, and down he comes, spinning. 

"Be drowned if there ain't!" said he. "He's sitting square upon theyard. I never see the boy Kentucky, if he isn't sitting on that yard. '_Don't you come up!_' he cries out, --'_don't you come up!_'"

"Bob's drunk, and McCallum's a fool!" said Jim Welch, standing by. SoWelch wolunteers up, and takes Jaloffe with him. They were a couple ofthe coolest hands aboard, --Welch and Jaloffe. So up they goes, and downthey comes like the rest, by the back-stays, by the run. 

"He beckoned of me back!" says Welch. "He hollered not to come up! notto come up!"

After that there wasn't a man of us would stir aloft, not for love normoney. 

Well, Whitmarsh he stamped, and he swore, and he knocked us aboutfurious; but we sat and looked at one another's eyes, and never stirred. Something cold, like a frost-bite, seemed to crawl along from man toman, looking into one another's eyes. 

"I'll shame ye all, then, for a set of cowardly lubbers!" cries themate; and what with the anger and the drink he was as good as his word, and up the ratlines in a twinkle. 

In a flash we were after him, --he was our officer, you see, and we feltashamed, --me at the head, and the lads following after. 

I got to the futtock shrouds, and there I stopped, for I saw himmyself, --a palish boy, with a jerk of thin hair on his forehead; I'dhave known him anywhere in this world or t'other. I saw him just asdistinct as I see you, Tom Brown, sitting on that yard quite steady withthe royal flapping like to flap him off. 

I reckon I've had as much experience fore and aft, in the course offifteen years aboard, as any man that ever tied a reef-point in anor'easter; but I never saw a sight like that, not before nor since. 

I won't say that I didn't wish myself well on deck; but I will say thatI stuck to the shrouds, and looked on steady. 

Whitmarsh, swearing that that royal should be furled, went on and wentup. 

It was after that I heard the voice. It came straight from the figure ofthe boy upon the upper yard. 

But this time it says, "_Come up! Come up!_" And then, a little louder, "_Come up! Come up! Come up!_" So he goes up, and next I knew there wasa cry, --and next a splash, --and then I saw the royal flapping from theempty yard, and the mate was gone, and the boy. 

Job Whitmarsh was never seen again, alow or aloft, that night or everafter. 

I was telling the tale to our parson this summer, --he's a fair-mindedchap, the parson, in spite of a little natural leaning to strawberries, which I always take in very good part, --and he turned it about in hismind some time. 

"If it was the boy, " says he, --"and I can't say as I see any reasonespecial why it shouldn't have been, --I've been wondering what hisspiritooal condition was. A soul in hell, "--the parson believes in hell, I take it, because he can't help himself; but he has that solemn, tenderway of preaching it as makes you feel he wouldn't have so much as achicken get there if he could help it, --"a lost soul, " says the parson(I don't know as I get the words exact), --"a soul that has gone and beenand got there of its own free will and choosing would be as like as notto haul another soul alongside if he could. Then again, if the mate'stime had come, you see, and his chances were over, why, that's the willof the Lord, and it's hell for him whichever side of death he is, andnobody's fault but hisn; and the boy might be in the good place, and dothe errand all the same. That's just about it, Brown, " says he. "A mangoes his own gait, and, if he won't go to heaven, he _won't_, and thegood God himself can't help it. He throws the shining gates all openwide, and he never shut them on any poor fellow as would have enteredin, and he never, never will. "

Which I thought was sensible of the parson, and very prettily put. 

There's Molly frying flapjacks now, and flapjacks won't wait for no man, you know, no more than time and tide, else I should have talked tillmidnight, very like, to tell the time we made on that trip home, andhow green the harbor looked a sailing up, and of Molly and the babycoming down to meet me in a little boat that danced about (for we cast alittle down the channel), and how she climbed up a laughing and a cryingall to once, about my neck, and how the boy had grown, and how when heran about the deck (the little shaver had his first pair of boots onthat very afternoon) I bethought me of the other time, and of Molly'swords, and of the lad we'd left behind us in the purple days. 

Just as we were hauling up, I says to my wife: "Who's that old ladysetting there upon the lumber, with a gray bunnet, and a gray ribbon onher cap?"

For there was an old lady there, and I saw the sun all about her, andall on the blazing yellow boards, and I grew a little dazed and dazzled. 

"I don't know, " said Molly, catching onto me a little close. "She comesthere every day. They say she sits and watches for her lad as ran away. "

So then I seemed to know, as well as ever I knew afterwards, who it was. And I thought of the dog. And the green rocking-chair. And the book thatWhitmarsh wadded his old gun with. And the front-door, with the boy awalking in. 

So we three went up the wharf, --Molly and the baby and me, --and sat downbeside her on the yellow boards. I can't remember rightly what I said, but I remember her sitting silent in the sunshine till I had told herall there was to tell. 

"_Don't_ cry!" says Molly, when I got through, --which it was the moresurprising of Molly, considering as she was doing the crying all toherself. The old lady never cried, you see. She sat with her eyes wideopen under her gray bunnet, and her lips a moving. After a while I madeit out what it was she said: "The only son--of his mother--and she--"

By and by she gets up, and goes her ways, and Molly and I walk hometogether, with our little boy between us. 

The End.