Reuben pushed the green gate aside, and entering upon the lawn, found Fuller in the act of carrying the table to its customary place. He had been so free of the house, and had been for years so accustomed to enter it and leave it at his will, that there was nothing in the world but his own restraining sense of shyness to prevent him from walking past his host with the merest salutation and fulfilling his own purpose then and there. But the trouble was that to his own disturbed feeling Fuller would infallibly have guessed his purpose, and either of the other members of the quartette arriving, or any chance visitor strolling in, would have known in a moment that he could have no other reason for entering the house than to ask Ruth's hand in marriage. So he stood somewhat awkwardly by the table, while Fuller re-entered the house and, after a little pause, returned with a pile of music.

"This here's one of Ezra's books, I reckon," said the elder, singling one volume from the pile. "It's the one you browt here the day he gi'en you his libery."

"Ah!" said Reuben, "Manzini? That was the last music he opened for his own playing, so he told me." He fluttered the leaves, glancing towards the house meanwhile, but seeing nothing of his goddess. Fuller contented himself with a mere grunt in answer to Reuben's statement, and rolled off into the house once more, returning this time with his 'cello. He propped the instrument tenderly against the table, and, seating himself near it, began to arrange the music. Reuben still stood awkwardly fingering the leaves of Manzini's duets, when Ruth appeared at the house door. He had made but a step towards her, and had not even made a step in his mind towards reading the half-shy, half-appealing aspect she wore, when the prim figure of Aunt Rachel appeared from behind her, and the old woman, with defiance expressed in every line and gesture, laid her mit-tened hand on the girl's arm and advanced by her side. Reuben stood arrested, and made a bow which he felt to be altogether awkward. Ruth's brown eyes drooped, and she blushed, but she found courage a second or two later for a glance of appeal which Reuben did not see. He offered chairs to the old woman and the young one as they came near him, but Rachel, with a stony little nod, walked by, taking her niece with her.

The young man took instant counsel with himself. He sat down near the table with Manzini's oblong folio in his lap, and, turning the pages here and there, selected a moment when he was unobserved, and slipped his missive between the front board of the binding and the first blank leaf. It would be strange if he could not find time to whisper, "Look in Manzini" before the day was over; and even if that course should fail he could at least forward his letter by the penny-post, though that would imply a delay of twelve hours, and was hardly tolerable to think of. If he missed the opportunity for that hasty whisper he would carry Manzini away, and so re-secure possession of his letter.

While he was planning thus, Rachel and her niece were walking up and down the grass-plot, and the old lady was talking away at a great rate, describing the glories of the house of Lady De Blacquaire, and affecting to be absorbed in her theme. She was not so much absorbed, however, that her manner did not clearly indicate her misliking sense of Reuben's nearness every time she passed him, though she did not so much as cast a glance in his direction. By-and-by the two Elds appeared, and the customary business of the afternoon began. Reuben had much ado to pin himself down to the music, but he succeeded fairly well, and gave nobody reason to suppose that his mind wandered far and often from his task. It was well for his repute for sanity, especially after the wild leadership at morning service, that he was familiar with the theme. Even when his thoughts wandered farthest he was mechanically accurate. All the time the book with the all-important missive in it lay on the table before him, and in his fancy disasters were constantly happening which revealed his secret. He repeated the terms of the note again and again, and added to it and altered it and resolved to rewrite it, and again resolved to leave it as it was.

The afternoon party received an unusual addition in the persons of Mrs. Sennacherib and Mrs. Isaiah, who arrived when the performers were half-way through their programme.

"I forgot to tell thee, Reuben, lad," said Fuller, "Ruth's got a bit of a tay-party this afternoon, and thee beest to stop with the rest on 'em."

"Thank you," said Reuben; "I shall stay with pleasure." He felt Rachel's disapproving glance upon him, and looking up met it for a moment, and returned it with a puzzled gravity. She was standing alone at a little distance from the table, and Ruth and the two new arrivals were in the act of entering the house. Reuben obeyed the impulse which moved him, and rising from his place crossed over to where the little old lady stood. "May I ask," he said, "how I came to fall under your displeasure, Miss Blythe?" He glanced over his shoulder to assure himself that nobody took especial note of him, and spoke in a low and guarded voice.

Miss Blythe made the most of her small figure, glanced with extreme deliberation from his eyes to his boots and back again, and, turning away, followed her niece and the two new arrivals, walking with an air of exaggerated dignity. Reuben, returning to his seat, had to make great play with his pocket-handkerchief to cover the signs of confusion which arose at this rebuff. Miss Blythe could scarcely have expressed a livelier contempt for him if he had been a convicted pick-pocket.

His share of the music went so ill after this that he excited something like consternation in the minds of his friends.

"What's come to the lad, 'Saiah," asked Sennacherib.

"Bist a bit out o' sorts, Reuben, bisent?" said Isaiah, mildly anxious.

"I can't play to-day," Reuben answered, almost fretfully. "Let us try again. No. There's nothing the matter. Nothing in the world. Let us try again."

They tried again, and by dint of great effort Reuben kept control over himself and escaped further disgrace, although at one time Ruth's sympathetic, shy look almost broke him down, and at another, Rachel's stony gaze so filled him with wonderment and anger that he had much ado to save himself from falling.

Ruth retired to superintend the preparation of the tea-table within-doors, and Rachel followed her. In their absence he got on better, but it was almost as great a relief as he had ever known to find that the concert at last was over, and that he could give unrestrained attention to the thoughts which pressed upon him.

"Tea is ready," said Ruth, standing in the doorway, and shading her eyes from the afternoon sunlight with one hand. Rachel surveyed the quartette party from the window, but Reuben could see that she was held in talk by Mrs. Sennacherib.

"This may be my only chance to-day," said the lover to himself, with one great heart-beat and a series of flutterings after it. He controlled himself as well as he might, and with a single glance towards Ruth stood a little behind the rest and feigned to arrange the music on the table.

Isaiah and Sennacherib went first, and Fuller waddled in their rear. Reuben, after as long a pause as he dared to make, followed them, and raising his eyes saw that Ruth stood just without the door-way making room for her guests to pass. "Would she give him a chance for a word? The girl saw the unconscious pleading in his eyes, and blushing, looked on the ground. But she kept her place, and Reuben coming up to her just as Fuller's burly figure rolled out of sight through the door of the sitting-room, took both her hands in his, not knowing in his eagerness that he dared to advance so far, and murmured,

"Ruth, look in the Manzini. The duets. The book my uncle gave me."

"Niece Ruth," said Rachel's voice from the sitting-room door-way. Reuben dropped the hands he held, becoming conscious in that action only of the fact that he had taken them, and stepped into the dusky passage, thankful for the gloom, for he felt that he was blushing like a boy. Ruth had made a guilty start forward into the garden, and did not pause until she had reached the table. "I beg your pardon, sir," said Rachel, frostily, as she moved aside to make room for Reuben to pass her, but when she had once seen the young people wide apart she was satisfied, and forbore to call the girl again.

"Look in the Manzini," Reuben had said, and the girl, almost without knowing it, had paused with her hands resting on the glazed brown mill-board which bound it. He would think, if she opened the book at once, that she was curiously eager to obey him, and her heart told her pretty truly what she would find when she looked there. The fear almost made her turn away; but then, since she was there, if she did not care to look he would think her cruelly disdainful. Was anybody watching her? In every nerve she felt the eyes of all the party in the sitting-room as if they actually pierced and burned her. But standing with bent head, with an attitude of reverie which she felt to be unspeakably guilty, she raised the board with an air of chance, a semblance of no interest touching her features—as though that could influence anybody, since her face was hidden—and saw a letter with her name upon it. To lay one hand upon this, and to slip it into the pocket of her dress while actually turning with a look of nonchalance towards the sitting-room window, was felt by the criminal herself to be the most barefaced and wickedest of pretences. To make the tour of the garden afterwards with the letter in her pocket, and to gather flowers for a bouquet for the tea-table, while tea was actually ready and everybody was awaiting her, was at once a necessity, an hypocrisy, and a dreadful breach of good-manners.

She took her place at the tea-table with perfect innocence and unconsciousness of aspect; but Reuben looked guilty enough for two, until the genuine gravity of the situation recalled him to himself, when he began to look as solemn as a graven image, and returned wry answers to the talk of those about him. There was no calling back his declaration now, and he felt it to be clumsy beyond expression, and inadequate alike to his sense of Ruth's perfections and his own poor deserts. No man can quite know, until he has tried it, how severe an ordeal it is to sit at table with the lady of his heart, while that lady has his declaration, as yet unread, in her pocket.

Ruth was so self-possessed and tranquil that it was evident to her lover's masculine understanding that she was ignorant of the nature of his missive, and probably indifferent to it. Reuben's anxiety and preoccupation were in themselves a gladness to the girl, for they bore out the delightful prophecy of her own heart. She had always thought Reuben, even when she was a school-girl, the handsomest and manliest and cleverest of men. If it were unmaidenly to have thought so, and to allow her heart to be captured by a man who had never spoken a word of open love to her, she must be called unmaidenly. But there was never a purer heart in the world, and the sophistications of experience, vicarious or otherwise, had not touched her. It came natural to love Reuben, and perhaps the young man's eyes had made more of an excuse for her than would readily be fancied by those who have never experimented.

It may be, if the truth were known, that the maiden found the situation almost as trying as her lover, for there was a most tantalizing element of uncertainty in it, and uncertainty is especially grievous to the feminine heart. But at last her duty as hostess no longer severely holding her, she left the room, ostensibly to assist in clearing away the tea-things, and was no sooner out of sight than she skimmed like a swallow to her own chamber and there read Reuben's letter. When she came back again Reuben knew that she had read it, and knew, too, that she had read it with favor and acceptance. There was a subtle, shy, inward happiness in Ruth's heart which diffused itself for her lover's delight as if it had been a perfume. Not another creature but himself and her knew of it, and yet to him it was real, and as evident as anything he saw or touched.

Once or twice she looked at him so sweetly, so shyly, so tenderly, and yet withal so frankly, that his heart ached with the desire he felt to rise and clasp her in his arms and claim her for his own before them all. Aunt Rachel looked at him once or twice also, as if she stabbed him with an icicle, but he glanced back with a smile sunny enough to have thawed the weapon if only the bearer of it had been within measurable distance.

Rachel did not read her niece, for the simple reason that she was too resolved on reading what she supposed herself to have written to be able to trace the characters of mere nature. But she partly read the young man's triumph, and adjudged it as a piece of insolence, determining that he should be punished for it richly, as he deserved. She had exposed the character of the Golds to her niece, and had told her that they were wicked and bad and shameless—male jilts, whose one delight it was to break feminine hearts. Ruth would certainly believe what she had been told on such unimpeachable authority, and would never dream of permitting herself to be duped by a man of whom she knew so much beforehand. Any airs of triumph the young man might display were therefore ridiculous and insolent, deserving both of chastisement and contempt.

Ruth's household occupations took her away a second time, and if she chose to fill a mere two or three minutes by writing a note to a young man who sat within six yards of her, nobody suspected her of being so engaged. When she came back to her visitors, Reuben would fain have made opportunity to be near her, but Rachel was unwinking in her watchfulness, and he was compelled to surrender his design. The bells began to ring for evening church, and Ruth and the womenfolk went up-stairs to make ready for out-of-doors. The quartette party sat downstairs with open windows, each of the three seniors pulling gravely at a long church-warden, and the junior pretending to look at an old-fashioned book of beauty, in which a number of impossible ladies simpered on the observer from bowers of painted foliage.

Sitting near the window with his back to the garden, and deeply absorbed in his own fancies, he found himself on a sudden impelled to turn his head, not because of any sound that reached him, but because of some curious intuition of Ruth's neighborhood to him. She was walking towards him at that moment, her footsteps falling soundlessly on the greensward, her face blushing and her eyes downcast. As she passed him and entered the house she raised her eyes for a moment, and Reuben read in them a sweet, enigmatical intelligence, and a charmed shyness so delicious that he thrilled at it from head to feet.

He longed, as any lover may imagine of him, to exchange a word with her. He was certain, but he desired to be more than certain. To know was nothing—his heart demanded to hear the good news and to be surfeited with hearing. But the small dragon still guarded his Hesperides, and on the way to church he escorted Mrs. Isaiah, a matron gaunt and stern, whose cheerful doctrine it was that any spoken word not made actually necessary by the business of life was a sin. Mrs. Isaiah's grim reticence was less of a trouble to him than it would have been under ordinary circumstances, for he had his own thoughts to think, and did not care to be drawn away from them.

At the lich-gate Aunt Rachel paused to shake hands with everybody but Ruth and Reuben.

"You had better take Manzini home to-night, Reuben," said Ruth. She tried hard to make her voice commonplace; but to Reuben's ears there was a meaning in it, and his eyes answered to the meaning with such a flash of tenderness and assured joy that, in spite of all she could do, Ruth must needs lower her head and blush again.

Rachel's youthful eyes flashed from one to the other.

"I do not propose to attend the service this evening, Niece Ruth," she said, a minute later, when Reuben and his confrere had entered on the cavernous darkness of the winding stairway. "I will call for you, however," she added. "I shall be in the porch at the close of the service."

At the first clause of this speech Ruth rejoiced, but at the second her sense of relief was spoiled.

"Very well, dear," she answered. Aunt Rachel could not stand much longer between her and Reuben, and if a fight should have to be made it would be early enough to begin it when she had her father definitely on her side, as she would have to-morrow. So she went into church and made strenuous efforts to attend to the service and the sermon, and failed dismally, and thought herself terribly profane.

Aunt Rachel, being left alone at the church porch, turned away and walked straight back to the house she had left. The green door in the high wall needed no more than a push to open it, and Rachel entered the garden, and, walking straight to the table at which the quartette party had sat playing an hour or two earlier, laid hands upon Manzini's volume of duets for the violin. She took it by the back of the cover and gave it a shake, and out from its pages fell a neatly folded little note, addressed in her niece's hand to Mr. Reuben Gold, and sealed in bronze wax with the impress of a rose. The little old lady pounced upon it, and held it at arm's-length in both hands.

"Infatuated child!" she said, in her primmest and most fashionable accent. "My premonitions have not deceived me."

She placed the note in the bosom of her dress, set the book in its former position upon the table, and left the garden. Nobody looking at her could have supposed that she had been guilty of such an act; for if ever conscious rectitude and high resolve for good shone in a human face, they lighted hers. Once she stopped short in the lonely lane, and stamped one small foot with lofty emphasis.

"The very method!" she said aloud, in a voice of scorn. "For aught I know, the very book! You shall not suffer as I have suffered, my poor dear child. I thank Heaven that I am at hand to preserve you."

Thus animated by her own self-approval, Aunt Rachel, sometimes in scorn, sometimes in tenderness, but of tener in triumph, walked homeward, waited the due time, and walked back to church again. She succeeded in getting Ruth away without a sight of Reuben, but the young man passed them on their way with a step still quicker than he had used that morning. He threw a gay "good-night, Ruth," over his shoulder as he walked, and Ruth felt the old lady's hand tighten on her arm, though she was far from guessing the nature of the emotion which moved her.

Once out of sight in the summer dusk, Reuben ran. He reached the green door, and with no surprise found it wide open. He approached the table, seized the old folio? and turning it back downward so that nothing could fall from it, sped home, hugging it by the way. When he reached his own room he was breathless, but he struck a light, drew down the blinds, and turned over the leaves of the music-book one by one. In the centre of the book he paused, for there he seemed to find the object of his search. A note, bearing for sole superscription "Mr. Gold," was pinned to the edge of the page. But was that quaint, old-fashioned handwriting Ruth's? Why should she write to him on paper so old and yellow and faded? Why should the very pin that held it to the page be rusted as if it had been there for years?

The note was sealed with two wafers, and the paper cracked across as he opened it. It began "Dear Mr. Gold," and was signed "R." It ran thus—

"I have not ansrd your estmd note until now, though in receipt of it since Thursday, for I dare not seem precipitate in such a matter. But I have consulted my own heart, and have laid it before the Throne, knowing no earthly adviser. Dear Mr. Gold, it shall be as you wish, and I trust God may help me to be a worthy helpmeet. So no more till I hear again from you."

It was impossible that this should be meant for him, or that Ruth should have written it; but though he searched the book from cover to cover, there was no other missive to be found within it.



CHAPTER X.

"That is a very insolent young man," said Aunt Rachel, as Reuben threw his hurried greeting over his shoulder in the dusk.

"Indeed, aunt," the girl answered, a little more boldly than she would have dared to speak had the light been clearer—"indeed, aunt, you are quite mistaken about him, and I don't understand why you should speak of Mr. Gold and his uncle as you do."

She cared less what Rachel thought or said of Reuben's uncle, though she had always had a friendly and admiring friendship for the old solitary, than she cared what was thought and said of Reuben. But it was easier to champion the two together than to defend her lover alone.

"You are a child," said Aunt Rachel, composedly. "What do you know of the opposite sex?"

The question was obviously outside the range of discussion, but it silenced Ruth for the moment. The elder woman presumed upon her triumph, and continued:

"Confidence is natural to youth. That is an axiom I have frequently heard fall from the lips of my dear mistress. As you grow older you will grow less positive in your opinions, and will be careful to have a solid foundation for them. Now I know these people, and you do not."

"My dear aunt," said Ruth, in protest, "I have known Mr. Gold ever since I could walk."

"Of which Mr. Gold are we speaking?" demanded Rachel.

"It is true of both of them," Ruth answered. "Neither of them would harm a fly, or go a hair's-breadth from the truth for all the world. They are the best men I have ever known."

"Niece Ruth!" said Rachel, stopping short in her walk, and bringing Ruth to a halt also, "upon the only occasion, since my return to Heydon Hay, on which I have found myself in the society of Mr. Ezra Gold, I took you into my confidence with respect to him. That is to say, I took you into my confidence as much as I have ever taken anybody. Mr. Ezra Gold is a mean and hypocritical person. Mr. Ezra Gold is a person who would not stop at any act of baseness or cruelty. Mr. Ezra Gold is a villain."

All this came from the old maid's lips with a chill and prim precision, which troubled her hearer more than any heat or violence could have done. But the old man's face and figure were before her with a wonderful vivid clearness. The stoop was that of fatigue, and yet it had a merciful mild courtesy in it too, and the gray face was eloquent of goodness.

"I can't believe it!" cried the girl, warmly. "Dear aunt, there must have been some terrible mistake. I am sure he is a good man. You have only to look at him to know that he is a good man."

"A whited sepulchre," said Aunt Rachel, walking on again. She had kept her mittened hand upon the girl's arm throughout the pause in their walk, and her very touch told her that Ruth was wounded and indignant. "What I say, I say of my own knowledge. He is a deliberate and a cruel villain."

The girl contained herself and was silent. In a little while she began to think with an almost tragic sense of pity of the withered and lonely old maid who walked beside her. She could pity thus profoundly because she could image herself in the like case; and though the figure she saw was far from being clear, her own terror of it and revolt from it told her how terrible it was. If she and Reuben should part as her aunt and Ezra had parted—if she should ever come to think of Reuben as Aunt Rachel thought of Ezra! The thought touched her with an arctic sense of cold and desolation. She drew away from it with an inward shudder, and in that instant of realization she saw the little old maid's personality really and truly standing in the middle of that bleak and frost-bound barrenness which she had dreamed as a possibility for herself. For the first time she saw and understood, and anger and bewilderment were alike swept away in the warm rush of sympathetic pity.

The road was lonely, and Ruth, with both eyes brimming over, placed her arm about her aunt's neck, and, stooping, kissed her on the cheek. Two or three of the girl's tears fell warm on Rachel's face, and the old maid started away from her with a sudden anger, which was less unreasonable than it seemed. She had of late years had an inclination to linger in talk about the theme of woman's trust and man's perfidy. For Ruth, and for Ruth only, she had identified this theory of hers with a living man who was known to both, but she had never intended herself to be pitied. She had never asked for pity in insisting that a righteous judgment should be dealt out to Ezra Gold. She had cried in Ruth's presence after her meeting with Ezra, but she had persuaded herself that her tears resulted from nothing more than the shock she felt at meeting an old repulsion. And since she had got to believe this, it followed as a thing of course that Ruth ought also to have believed it. The girl's pity wounded her and shamed her.

"Thank you," she said, in her chillest and primmest fashion, as she withdrew from Ruth's embrace. "I am not in want of pity." It was in her mind to tell Ruth to beware lest she herself should be in need of pity shortly; but she suppressed herself at considerable cost, and walked on stiffly and uncomfortably upright.

"I am very sorry, dear," said Ruth. "I did not mean to hurt you."

But Rachel was very indignant, and it was only as she remembered the purloined letter that she consented to be appeased. After all, she had taken the girl's welfare in hand, and had interested herself so kindly in her niece's behalf that she could not bear to be angry with her. So she permitted a truce to be called, and on Ruth's renewed apologies asked graciously that no more should be said about the matter. They parted at the green door of the garden, and Rachel, walking homeward, pondered on one important question. Ought she or ought she not to know the contents of the letter? Without knowing them, how could she know exactly the length to which her niece and the intending worker of her ruin had already gone together? It was necessary to know that, and she slid her hand into the bosom of her dress, and held the letter there, half resolving to read it on her arrival at home. But although, as her theft of the letter itself would prove, her ideas of honor were quaint, they were strong. She had constituted herself Niece Ruth's guardian, and she meant to fulfil all her self-imposed duties to the letter, but there was one whose rights came before her own. The letter should be opened in the presence of Ruth's father, and the two authorities should consult together as to what might be done.

She cast about for a safe and unsuspicious resting-place for the letter, and at last decided upon the tea-caddy.

She placed it there, locked it up, and by the aid of a chair and a table stowed it securely away in the topmost corner of a tall cupboard. Then, having hidden the key in the parlor chimney, she went to bed and to sleep, profoundly convinced that she had adopted the wisest of possible courses, and that Niece Ruth would be saved in the morning.

Meantime Aunt Rachel's antique griefs being out of sight for Ruth, were out of mind. She had her own affairs to think of, and found them at once pressing and delightful. By this time Reuben would have read her note, and would know all it had to tell him. When she thought how much it told him it seemed daring and strange, and almost terrible that she should have written it. For it admitted that his letter had made her very happy; she was not quite sure that she had not written "very, very happy," and wished it were to write again. But here in the solitude of her own chamber she could kiss Reuben's letter, and could rest it against her hot cheek in an ecstasy of fluttering congratulations. How he looked, how he walked, how he talked, how he smiled, how he played! How brave, how handsome, how altogether noble and good and gifted he was! There was nobody to compare with him in Heydon Hay, and the young men of Castle Barfield were contemptible by comparison with him. A human sun before whose rays other young women's luminaries paled like rush-lights! She seemed to have loved him always, and always to have been sure that he loved her; and yet it was wonderful to know it, and strange beyond strangeness to have told. She fancied him in the act of reading her letter, and she kissed his as she did so. Did he kiss hers? Was he as glad as she was? At these audacious fancies she hid herself and blushed.

Reuben all this while, and until a much later hour, was bewildering himself about the curious and old-fashioned missive he had discovered between the melodious pages of Manzini. Over and over again he searched through the volume, though he had already turned it leaf by leaf and knew that there was no chance of his having overlooked anything. Almost as often as he turned over the leaves of the music-book he reread the note he had taken from it. He questioned himself as to the possibility of his having allowed Ruth's note to fall, and mentally retraced his own fashion of taking up the book, and step by step the way in which he had carried it home. He was sure that nothing could have escaped from its pages since he had laid hands upon it, and was confronted with a double mystery. How had this time-stained epistle found its way into the pages, and how had the more modern missive be had fully expected to find there found its way out of it?

Suddenly an idea occurred to him which, though sufficiently far-fetched, seemed as if it might by chance explain the mystery. Long and long ago a son of the house of Gold had married a daughter of the house of Fuller. It was not outside the reasonable that Ruth should have had possession of this old document, in which a Ruth of that far-distant day had accepted a member of his own household. She might have chosen to answer him by this clear enigma, but a sense of solemnity in the phrasing of the letter made him hope his guess untrue. Desperate mysteries ask naturally for desperate guesses, and Reuben guessed right and left, but the mystery remained as desperate as ever. His thoughts so harried him that at last, though it was late for Heydon Hay, he determined to go at once to Fuller's house and ask for Ruth.

He slipped quietly down-stairs, and, leaving the door ajar, walked quickly along the darkened road, bearing poor Rachel's long-lost letter with him; but his journey, as he might have expected, ended in blank disappointment. Fuller's house was dark. He paced slowly home again, refastened the door, and went to bed, where he lay and tossed till broad dawn; and then reflecting that he would catch Ruth at her earliest household duties, fell asleep, and lay an hour or two beyond his usual time.

But if Reuben were laggard the innocent guardian dragon was early astir. Fuller, in his shirt-sleeves and a broad-brimmed straw hat, was pottering about his garden with a wheelbarrow and a pair of shears. He saw her at the open door of the garden, and sang out cheerily,

"Halloo, Miss Blythe! Beest early afoot this mornin'. I'm a lover o' the mornin' air myself. Theer's no time to my mind when the gardin-stuff looks half as well. The smell o' them roses is real lovely."

He gave a loud-sounding and hearty sniff, and smacked his lips after it. Rachel seemed to linger a little at the door.

"Come in," said Fuller, "come in. There's nobody here as bites. Beest come to see Ruth? I doubt if her's about as yet. We ode uns bin twice as early risin' as the young uns, nowadaysen. Wait a bit and I'll gi'e her a bit of a chi-hike. Her'll be down in a minute."

"No," said Rachel, "don't call her. I do not wish to see her yet. It will be necessary to see her later on; but first of all I desire to speak to you alone." Fuller looked a little scared at this exordium, but Rachel did not notice him. He had never known her so precise and picked in air and speech as she seemed to be that morning, and through all this a furtive air of embarrassment peeped out plainly enough for even him to become aware of it. "May we sit down at this table?" she asked. "I presume the chairs are aired already by the warm atmosphere of the morning? There is no danger of rheumatism?"

"What's up?" inquired Fuller, sitting down at once, and setting his shirt-sleeved arms upon the table. "Theer's nothin' the matter, is theer?"

"You shall judge for yourself," replied Rachel. She drew a letter from her pocket, and covering it with her hand laid it on the table. A distinct odor of tea greeted Fuller's nostrils, and he noticed it even then. "I presume that you are not unacquainted with the character of the Messrs. Gold?"

"It 'ud be odd if I warn't acquynted with 'em," said Fuller. "I've lived i' the same parish with 'em all my days."

"That being so," said Rachel, "you will be able to appreciate my feelings when I tell you that almost upon my first arrival here I discovered that the younger Gold was making advances to my niece Ruth."

"Ah?" said Fuller, interrogatively. "I don't count on bein' able to see no furder through a millstone than my neighbors, but I've been aweer o' that for a day or two."

"Ruth is motherless," pursued Rachel, a little too intent upon saying things in a predetermined way to take close note of Fuller. "A motherless girl in a situation of that kind is always in need of the guidance of an experienced hand."

"Yis, yis," assented Fuller, heartily. "Many thanks to you, Miss Blythe, for it's kindly meant, I know."

"Last night," said Rachel, "I made a discovery." There was nothing in the world of which she was more certain than she was of Fuller's approving sanction. Only a few minutes before she had had her doubts about it, and they had made her nervous. She was so very serious that Fuller began to look grave. But he was built of loyalty and unsuspicion; and though for a mere second a fear assailed him that the old lady was about to charge Reuben with playing his daughter false, he scouted the fancy hotly. In the warmth thus gained he spoke more briskly than common.

"Drive along, ma'am. Come to the root o' the matter."

"This letter," said Rachel, taking Ruth's answer to Reuben in both hands, "was written last night. It is addressed in your daughter's handwriting to Mr. Reuben Gold."

"Tis, yis, yis," said Fuller, impatiently, not knowing what to make of Rachel's funereal gravity.

"It appeared to me, after long consideration, that the best and wisest course I could adopt would be to bring it to you. I regard myself as being in a sense, and subject always to your authority, one of the child's natural guardians. If I did not view things in that light," the old lady explained, making elaborate motions with her lips for the distinct enunciation of every word, "I should consider that I was guilty of a sinful neglect of duty."

"Well," said Fuller, "as to sinful. But drive on, Miss Blythe."

"It appeared to me, then," continued Rachel, "that our plain duty would be to read this together, and to consult upon it."

"Wheer does the letter come from?" Fuller demanded, with a look of bewilderment.

"I discovered it in the—"

"What!" cried the old fellow, jumping from his chair and staring at her across the table with red face and wrathful eyes.

"I discovered it," replied Rachel, rising also and facing him with her head thrown back and her youthful eyes flashing, "I discovered it in the music-book which was left last night upon this table. I saw it placed there clandestinely by my niece Ruth."

"Be you mad, Miss Blythe?" asked Fuller, with a slow solemnity of inquiry which would have made the question richly mirthful to an auditor. "Do you mean to tell me as you go about spyin' after wheer my little wench puts her letters to her sweetheart? Why, fie, fie, ma'am! That's a child's trick, not a bit like a growd-up woman."

Fuller was astonished, but Rachel's amazement transcended his own.

"And you tell me, John Fuller, that you know the character of this man?"

"Know his character!" cried Fuller. "Who should know it better nor me? The lad's well-nigh lived i' my house ever sence he was no higher 'n my elber. Know his character? Ah! Should think I did an' all. The cliverest lad of his hands and the best of his feet for twenty mile around—as full o' pluck as a tarrier an' as kindly-hearted as a wench. Bar his Uncle Ezra, theer niver was a mon to match him in Heydon Hay i' my time. Know his character!" He was unused to speak with so much vigor, and he paused breathless and mopped his scarlet face with his shirt-sleeve, staring across his arm at Rachel meanwhile in mingled rage and wonder.

"His Uncle Ezra?" said Rachel, looking fixedly and scornfully back at him. "His Uncle Ezra is a villain!"

For a second or two he stared at her with a countenance of pure amazement, and then burst into a sudden gurgle of laughter. This so overmastered him that he had to cling to the table for support, and finally to resume his seat. His jolly face went crimson, and the tears chased each other down his fat cheeks. When he seemed to have had his laugh quite out, and sat gasping and mopping his eyes with his shirt-sleeve, a chance look at Rachel reinspired the passion of his mirth, and he laughed anew until he had to clip his wide ribs with his palms as if to hold himself together. A mere gleam of surprise crossed the scorn and anger of Rachel's face as she watched him, but it faded quickly, and when once it had passed her expression remained unchanged.

"Good-morning, Aunt Rachel," cried Ruth's fresh voice. "You are early." Rachel turned briskly round in time to see Ruth disappear from a white-curtained upper window. Fuller rose with a face of sudden sobriety, and began once more to mop his eyes. In a mere instant Ruth appeared at the door running towards the pair with a face all smiles. "Why, father," she cried, kissing the old man on the cheek, "what a laugh! You haven't laughed so for a year. What is the joke, Aunt Rachel?"

She saw at a glance that, whatever the jest might be, Aunt Rachel was no sharer in it.

"I know of no joke, Niece Ruth," said the old lady, with mincing iciness.

"Theer's summat serious at the bottom on it, but the joke's atop, plain for annybody to see," said Fuller. "But Miss Bly the's come here this mornin' of a funny sort of a arrant, to my thinking, though her seems to fancy it's as solemn a business as a burying."

"What is the matter?" asked Ruth, looking from one to the other. Some movement of Rachel's eyes sent hers to the table, and she recognized her own letter in a flash. She moved instinctively and laid her hand upon it.

"That's it," said her father, with a new gurgle. "'Twas your Aunt Rachel, my dear," he explained, "as see you put it somewheer last night, an' took care on it for you." Ruth turned upon the little old lady with a grand gesture, in which both hands were suddenly drawn down and backward until they were clinched together, crushing the letter between them behind her. "Her comes to me this morning," pursued Fuller, while the old woman and the young one looked at each other, "an' tells me plump an' plain as her wants t' open this letter and read it, along with me."

"Aunt Rachel!" said Ruth, with a sort of intense quiet, "how dare you?"

"I did nothing but my duty," said Rachel. "If I have exposed to you the character of these men in vain—"

"Exposed! Exposed!" cried Fuller. "What's this here maggot about exposin'? Who talks about exposin' a lad like that? The best lad i' the country-side without a 'ception!"

"You tell me then," said Rachel, turning upon him slowly, as if Ruth's eyes had an attraction for her, and she could scarcely leave them—"you tell me then that this Reuben Gold has your approval in making approaches to your daughter?"

"Approval!" shouted Fuller. "Yis. I've seen 'em gettin' fond on each other this five 'ear, and took a pleasure in it. What's agen the lad? Nothin' but the mumblin' of a bumble-bee as an old maid's got in her bonnet. A spite agen his uncle is a thing as is understandable."

"Indeed, sir," said Aunt Rachel, with frigid politeness. "Will you tell me why?"

"Well, no," said Fuller. "I'd rather I didn't. Look here. Let's have harmony. I'm no hand at quarrelin', even among the men, let alone among the petticuts. Let's have harmony. The wench has got her letter back, and theer's no harm done. And if theer is, ye'd better fight it out betwigst ye." With this he turned his back and waddled a pace or two. Then he turned a laughing face upon them, moving slowly on his axis. "Mek it up," he said, "mek it up. Let's have no ill blood i' the family. Nothin' like harmony."

Having thus delivered himself he rolled in-doors, and there sat down to his morning pipe. But anger and laughter are alike provocative of thirst, and seeking a jug in the kitchen he took his way to the cellar, and there had a copious draught of small beer, after which he settled himself down in his arm-chair, prepared to make the best of anything which might befall him.

The quarrel from which he had withdrawn himself did not seem so easy to be made up as he had appeared to fancy. Ruth and Rachel stood face to face in silence. To the younger woman the offence which had been committed against her seemed intolerable, and it took this complexion less because of the nature of the act itself than because of its consequences. It had mocked Reuben, and it had made her seem as if she were the mocker.

"You are angry, child!" said Rachel, at length. "I was prepared for that. But I was not prepared for your father's acquiescence in the ruinous course upon which you have entered."

"Ruinous course?" said Ruth.

"I repeat," said the old lady, "the ruinous course upon which you have entered. These men are villains."

"Do they steal other people's letters?" asked Ruth.

"They are villains," repeated Aunt Rachel, ignoring this inquiry. "Villains, cheats, deceivers. You will rue this day in years to come." Then, with prodigious sudden stateliness, "I find my advice derided. My counsels are rebuffed. I wish you a good-morning. I can entertain no further interest in your proceedings."



CHAPTER XII.

Rachel marched from the garden and disappeared through the door-way without a backward glance. The girl, holding the crumpled letter in both hands behind her, beat her foot upon the greensward, and looked downward with flushed cheeks and glittering eyes. Her life had not hitherto been fruitful of strong emotions, and she had never felt so angry or aggrieved as she felt now.

"How did she dare? What can Reuben think of me?"

These were the only thoughts which found form in her mind, and each was poignant.

A knock sounded at the street door, and she moved mechanically to answer it, but catching sight of her father's figure in the hall she turned away, and seated herself at the musicians' table.

Fuller greeted Reuben—for the early visitor was no other than he—with a broad grin, and stuck a facetious forefinger in his ribs.

"Come in, lad, come in," he said, chuckling. "I never seed such a lark i' my born days as we've had here this mornin'."

"Indeed!" said Reuben. "Can I—" He began to blush and stammer a little. "Can I see Miss Ruth, Mr. Fuller?"

"All i' good time, lad," replied Fuller. "Come in. Sit thee down." Reuben complied, scarcely at his ease, and wondered what was coming. "Was you expectin' any sort of a letter last night, Reuben?" the old fellow asked him, with a fat enjoying chuckle.

"Yes, sir," said Reuben, blushing anew, but regarding his questioner frankly.

"Was that what you took away the book o' duets for, eh?"

"Yes, sir."

"Didst find the letter?" Fuller was determined to make the most of his history, after the manner of men who have stories ready made for them but rarely.

"I don't know," replied Reuben, to the old man's amazement. "Do you know what the letter was about, Mr. Fuller?"

"Don't know?" cried Fuller. "What beest hov-erin' about? Knowst whether thee hadst a letter or not, dostn't?"

"I had a letter," said Reuben, "but I can't think it was meant for me. Perhaps I ought to have spoken first to you, sir, but I wrote to Miss Ruth yesterday—" There he paused, asking himself how to put this altogether sacred thing into words.

"Didst now?" asked Fuller, unctuously enjoying the young man's discomfort. "What might it ha' been about?"

"I wrote to ask her if she would marry me," said Reuben, with desperate simplicity.

"Ah!" said Fuller. "And what says her to that?"

"I can't believe that I have had her answer," returned Reuben, with much embarrassment. "I found a letter in the book, but I think—I am sure—it is not meant for me."

"You'll find Ruth i' the gardin," said Fuller, puzzled in his turn. "Her'll tell you, mayhap. But wait a bit; her's rare an' wroth this mornin', and I ain't sure as it's safe to be anigh her. Miss Blythe's been here this mornin'—Aunt Rachel, as the wench has allays called her, though her's no more than her mother's second cousin—and it seems as th' old creetur found out about Ruth's letter, and went and took it from wheer it was and marched it off. Her was here this mornin' t' ask me to open it and read it along with her. Theer's no tekin' note of her, Reuben, poor old ooman. Her's got a hive in her head. 'Do you know this young man's character' her says. 'Why, yis,' I says; 'it'd be odd if I didn't,' I says. 'Well,' her says, 'he's a villin.' 'Rubbidge,' says I; 'theer's no moor esteemable feller i' the parish,' I says, 'onless it's his uncle Ezra.' Then her fires up and her says, 'His uncle Ezra is a villin.' Then I bust out a-laughin' in her face. Her's flighty, you know, lad, her's uncommon flighty. Six-and-twenty year ago—it was afore thee couldst toddle—her left the parish because of Ezra."

"Because of my uncle?" There were so many things to be amazed at in this speech of Fuller's that the youngster hardly knew which to be surprised at most.

"Didst never hear o' that?" asked Fuller. "It's been the talk o' the parish ever sence her come back to live in it. Your uncle used to be a good deal at her mother's house from thirty to six-and-twenty 'ear ago, and used to tek his fiddle theer and gie 'em a taste o' music now and then. Her seems to ha' let it tek root in her poor head as he was squirin' her and mekin' up to her for marriage; but after four or five year her got tired and hopeless, I reckon, and went away. Then I expect her begun to brood a bit, after the mode of a woman as is lonely, and has got no such thing as a man around her, and that's how it is, lad."

"My uncle!" Reuben fell to pacing up and down the room, talking aloud, but as if he addressed himself rather than his sweetheart's father. "Manzini was the last man whose works he played—the last man he ever handled bow and fiddle for. His own words. He left the book open when he went away, and closed it when he came back again." He drew the discolored note from his pocket, and stared at it with a look of tragic certainty.

"Be we all mad together?" said Fuller. "What's the matter with the lad, i' the name o' wonder?"

"I'll explain everything, sir," answered Reuben, like a man awakening from sleep. "And yet I don't know that I can. I don't know that I have a right to explain. I could ask Ruth's advice. It's hard to know what to do in such a case."

"Theer's no such thing as a straight wescut i' the house, worse luck," said Fuller. "Theer is a clothesline, if that 'ud serve as well."

"May I see Miss Ruth, sir?" asked Reuben. "I'll tell you all about it if I can. But I think I have found out a very strange and mournful thing."

Fuller threw open the window and called "Ruth." She came in slowly, and started when she saw Reuben there, and both she and he stood for a moment in some confusion.

"Gi'e the wench a kiss and ha' done with it," said Fuller. "Her's as ready as thee beest willin'."

Reuben acted on this sage counsel, and Ruth, though she blushed like a rose, made no protest.

"Theer," said papa, hugging his fat waistcoat, and rolling from the room. "Call me when I'm wanted."

He was not wanted for a long time, for the lovers had much to say to each other, as was only natural. First of all, Ruth shyly gave Reuben the letter she had written the night before, and he read it, and then there were questions to be asked and answered on either side, as—Did she really love him? And why? And since when? And had she not always known that he loved her? All which the reader shall figure out of his or her own experience or fancy; for these things, though delightful in their own time and place, are not to be written of, having a smack of foolishness with much that is tender and charming.

Next—or rather interlaced with this—came Ruth's version of Aunt Rachel's curious behavior. And then said Reuben,

"I think I hold the key to that. But whether I do or not remains to be seen. I found this in Manzini. You see how old it looks. The very pin that held it to the paper was rusted half through. You see," turning it over, "it is addressed to Mr. Gold. I am afraid it was meant for my uncle, and that he never saw it. If it is a breach of faith to show it you I cannot help it. Read it, darling, and tell me what you think is best to be done."

Ruth read it, and looked up with a face pale with extreme compassion.

"Reuben," she said, "this is Aunt Rachel's handwriting. This is all her story." She began to cry, and Reuben comforted her. "What can we do?" she asked, gently evading him. "Oh, Reuben, how pitiful, how pitiful it is!"

"Should he have it after all these years?" asked Reuben. "What can it be but a regret to him?"

"Oh yes," she answered, with clasped hands and new tears in her eyes, "he must have it. Think of his poor spirit knowing afterwards that we had kept it from him?"

"It will be a sore grief for him to see it. I fear so. A sore grief."

"Aunt Rachel will be less bitter when she knows. But oh, Reuben, to be parted in that way for so long! Do you see it all? He wrote to her asking her to be his wife, and she wrote back, and he never had her answer, and waited for it. And she, waiting and waiting for him, and hearing nothing, thinking she had been tricked and mocked, poor thing, and growing prouder and bitterer until she went away. I never, never heard of anything so sad." She would have none of Reuben's consoling now, though the tears were streaming down her cheeks. "Go," she begged him—"go at once, and take it to him. Think if it were you and me!"

"It would never have happened to you and me, my darling," said Reuben. "I'd have had 'Yes' or 'No' for an answer. A man's offer of his heart is worth a 'No, thank you,' though he made it to a queen."

"Go at once," she besought him. "I shall be unhappy till I know he knows!"

"Well, my dear," said Reuben, "if you say go, I go. But I'd as lief put my hand in a fire. The poor old man will have suffered nothing like this for many a day."

"Stop an' tek a bit o' breakfast, lad," cried Fuller, as Reuben hurried by him, at the door which gave upon the garden. "It'll be ready i' five minutes."

"I have my orders, sir," said Reuben, with a pale smile. "I can't stop this morning, much as I should like to."

Like most healthy men of vivid fancy he was a rapid walker, and in a few minutes he was in sight of his uncle's house. His heart failed him and he stopped short irresolutely. Should he send the letter, explaining where he found it, and how? He could hardly bear to think of looking on the pain the old man might endure. And yet would it not be kinder to be with him? Might he not be in need of some one? and if he were, who was there but his nephew—the one man of his kindred left alive?

"I'll do it at once," said Reuben, and walking straight to the door, he knocked. He would have given all he had to be away when this was done, but he had to stand his ground, and he waited a long time while a hand drew back the shrieking bolts and clattering chain within. Then the key turned in the lock. The door opened and his uncle stood before him.

"Beest early this morning," he said, with a smile. "Theer's something special brings thee here so 'soon?"

"Yes," answered Reuben, clearing his throat, "something special."

"Come in, lad," said Ezra. "No trouble, I hope. Theer's a kind of a troubled look upon you. What is it?"

Reuben entered without an immediate answer, and Ezra closed the door behind him. The gloom and the almost vault-like odors of the chamber struck upon him with a cold sense of solitude and age. They answered to the thoughts that filled him—the thoughts of his uncle's lonely and sunless life.

"Trouble!" said the old man, in an inward voice. "Theer's trouble everywheer! What is it, lad?"

"Sit down, uncle," began Reuben, after a pause in which Ezra peered at him anxiously. "I find I must tell you some business of my own to make myself quite clear. I wrote a note to Ruth last night, and I learned from her that she had put an answer between the leaves of Manzini. I took the book home and found a note addressed to Mr. Gold. I opened it, and it was signed with an 'R,' and so I read it. But I can't help thinking it belongs to you. The paper's very yellow and old, and I think "—his voice grew treacherous, and he could scarcely command it—"I think it must have lain there unnoticed for some years."

He held it out rustling and shaking in his hand. Ezra, breathing hard and short, accepted it, and began to grope in his pockets for his spectacle-case. After a while he found it, and tremblingly setting his glasses astride his nose, began to unfold the paper, which crackled noisily in the dead silence.

When he had unfolded it he glanced across at Reuben and walked to the window.

"Theer's summat wrong," he said, when he had stood there for a minute or two, with the crisp, thick old paper crackling in his hand. "Summat the matter wi' my eyes. Read it—out." His voice was ghastly strange.

Reuben approached him and took the letter from his fingers. In this exchange their hands met, and Ezra's was like ice. He laid it on Reuben's shoulder, repeating, "Read it out."

"'Dear Mr. Gold,'" read Reuben, "I have not answered your esteemed note until now, though in receipt of it since Thursday.'"

"Thursday?" said Ezra.

"Thursday," repeated Reuben. "'For I dare not seem precipitate in such a matter. But I have consulted my own heart, and have laid it before the Throne, knowing no earthly adviser.'"

There was such a tremor in the hand which held him that Reuben's voice failed for pure pity.

"Yes," said Ezra. "Goon."

"'Dear Mr. Gold,'" read Reuben, in a voice even less steady than before, "'it shall be as you wish.'" There he paused again, his voice betraying him.

"Go on," said Ezra.

"'It shall be as you wish, and I trust God may help me to be a worthy helpmeet. So no more till I hear again from you. R.'"

"That's all?" asked Ezra.

"That's all."

"Thank you, lad, thank you." He stooped as if in the act of sitting down, and Reuben, passing an arm about his waist, led him to an armchair. "Thank you, lad," he said again. An eight-day clock ticked in a neighboring room. "That was how it came to pass," said the old man, in a voice so strangely commonplace that Reuben started at it. "Ah! That was how it came to pass." He was silent again for two or three minutes, and the clock ticked on. "That was how it came to pass," he said again. With great deliberation he set his hands together, finger by finger, in the shape of a wedge, and then pushing them between his knees, bent his head above them, and seemed to stare at the dim pattern of the carpet. He was silent for a long time now, and sat as still as if he were carved in stone. "Who's there?" he cried, suddenly looking up.

"I am here, uncle," Reuben answered.

"Yes, yes," said Ezra. "Reuben. Yes, of course. And that was how it came to pass."

Reuben, with a burning and choking sensation in his throat, stood in his place, not knowing what to say or do.

"Wheer is it?" asked Ezra, looking up again. Reuben handed him the note, and he sat with bent head above it for a long time. "Reuben, lad," he said then, "I'll wish thee a good-mornin'. I'm like to be poor company, and to tell the truth, lad, I want to be by mysen for a while. I've been shook a bit, my lad, I've been shook a bit."

As he spoke thus he arose, and with his hands folded behind him walked to and fro. His face was grayer than common, and the bright color which generally marked his cheeks was flown; but it was plain to see that he had recovered full possession of himself, though he was still much agitated. Reuben went away in silence, and Ezra continued to pace the room for an hour. His house-keeper appeared to tell him that breakfast was on the table, but though he answered in his customary manner he took no further notice. She came again to tell him with a voice of complaint that everything was cold and spoiled.

"Well, well, woman," said Ezra, "leave it theer."

He went on walking up and down, until, without any acceleration of his pace, he changed the direction of his walk and passed out at the door, feeling in the darkened little passage for his hat.

"You sha'n't goo out wi' nothing on your stomach," said the servant, who had been watching and waiting to see what he would do. Ezra, to satisfy her, poured out and drank a cup of coffee, and then walked out into the street, bending his steps in the direction of Rachel's cottage. Twice on the way he paused and half drew from his waistcoat-pocket the yellow old note which had so long lingered on its way to him, but each time he returned it without looking at it, and walked on again.

He stood for a moment at the wicket-gate, and then opening it passed through, suffering it to fall with a clatter behind him. His hand trembled strangely as he lifted it to the door, and he knocked with a tremulous loudness. When he had waited for a time he heard Rachel's footsteps tapping on the oil-cloth of the passage which divided her toy sitting-room from her bandbox of a parlor. His gray face went a shade grayer, and he cleared his throat nervously, with the tips of his thin fingers at his month. He heard the rattling of the door-chain, but it seemed rather as if it were being put up than taken down, and this suspicion was confirmed when it was opened with a little jar and stopped short at the confines of the chain. Rachel's face looked round the edge of the door. He had time to speak but a single word—"Rachel!"

The door was vigorously slammed in his face, and he heard the emphatic tapping of footsteps as she retired. He stood for a minute irresolute, and then, quitting the porch, walked round the thread of gravelled foot-path which led to the back of the cottage. He had but rounded the corner of the building when the back door closed with a clang, and he heard the bolts shot. Next, while he still stood irresolute, he saw Rachel approach a window and vigorously apply herself to the blind cord. In the mere instant which intervened between this and the descent of the blind she looked at him with a profound and passionate scorn. The old man sighed, and nodding his head up and down retraced his steps, but lingering in the pathway in the little garden, and surveying the house wistfully, he was again aware of Rachel, who faced him once more with an unchanging countenance. This time she appeared at the parlor window, and a second time the blind came down between him and her gaze of uncompromising scorn.

"Eh, dear!" he said, tremblingly, as he turned away. "Her's got reason to think it, poor thing. It's hard to find out the ways o' Providence. If it warn't for good it couldn't ha' happened, but it's a heavy burden all the same."



CHAPTER XIII.

Ezra walked home and sat there alone until evening. His house-keeper routed him from his armchair for dinner and tea, and at each meal he made a feeble pretence of eating and drinking, and, having been scolded for his poor appetite, went back to his old place. He sat there till the room was dark, scarcely moving, but wearing no very noticeable sign of pain or trouble. The story was so old, and the misfortune it related was so long past mending! He had been gray himself these many years, and the things which surrounded him and touched him had long since shared all his own want of color.

There was no relighting these old ashes. And yet, in defiance of that avowed impossibility, they seemed now and again to glow. They warmed him and lighted him back to a perception of lost odor and dead color. They stung him into some remembrance of the pain of years ago. And then, again, they were altogether cold and lifeless.

He said vaguely in a half whisper that it was a pity; and the phrase rose to his lips a hundred times—oftener than not an utterance purely mechanical, and expressing neither regret for Rachel nor for himself, nor sorrow for their division. When he was not thinking of her or of himself, he murmured that this was how it had come to pass, and did not seem to care or feel at all.

When the gloom was deepening in Ezra's ill-lighted chamber, though the light of the summer evening still lingered outside, the house-keeper came in and drew the blinds, and left behind her a single candle, which left the room as dusky as before. Shortly after this Reuben came in, and Ezra, nodding, signed him to a chair. The young man took a seat in silence.

"Well, lad," said his uncle, when to the young man the continued stillness had grown almost ponderous. The seconds had seemed to drop one by one upon him from the audible ticking of the old clock in the next room, each with an increasing weight of embarrassed sympathy.

"Well, uncle?" returned Reuben, trying to speak in his ordinary way, and only succeeding in sounding shamefully flippant and unsympathetic to his own ears.

"I've a mind to have a talk with you," said Ezra. "Is the door shut?"

Reuben rose to see, and murmuring that it was closed, resumed his seat. He waited a while in expectation that his uncle was about to confide in him.

"When beest going to make up your mind to pluck up a courage and speak to Ruth?" the old man asked.

"To Ruth, sir?" returned Reuben. The question staggered him a little.

"To Ruth," said Ezra.

"I have spoken," answered Reuben. "We are going to be married."

"That's well," the old man said, mildly. "But I looked to be told of any such thing happening. Thee and me, lad, are all as is left o' th' old stock i' this part o' the world."

"Don't think I should have kept you ignorant of it," said Reuben. "I only knew this morning. I have not seen you since till now."

"Well, lad, well," said Ezra, "I wish thee happy. But I'm sure you know that without need of any word o' mine. I asked because I meant to give out a bit of a warning agen the danger of delay. Theer's not alone the danger of it, but sometimes the cruelty of it. It's hard for a young woman as has been encouraged to set her heart upon a man, to be kept waitin' on the young man's pleasure. You see, lad, they'm tongue-tied. Perhaps"—he offered this supposition with perfect gravity—"perhaps it's the having been tongue-tied afore marriage as makes some on 'em so lively and onruled in speech when marriage has set 'em free."

There was a definite sense in Reuben's mind that the old man was not saying what he wished to say, and this sense was strengthened when Ezra, after moving once or twice in his seat, cleared his throat and began to walk up and down the room.

"Had you read that letter as you brought to me this morning, lad?" he asked, coughing behind his hand, and trying to speak as if the thing were a commonplace trifle.

"I read it because I thought that it must be addressed to me," said Reuben. "I had written to Ruth, and she told me to look in Manzini for her answer. I found nothing but that letter in the book."

"Why, how was that?" asked Ezra, without turning towards him.

"Her own note had been taken away before I got the book." Reuben felt himself on dangerous ground. It was unpleasant to have to talk of these things, and it looked impossible to reveal Rachel's eccentricity to Ezra, knowing what he knew.

"Ah!" said Ezra, absent-mindedly. "You read the letter then!" He went on pacing up and down. "You understood it?"

"I—seemed to understand it," said Reuben. Ezra came back to his chair and seated himself with a look of half resolve.

"Reuben," he began, in a voice pathetically ill-disguised, "it was something of a cruelty as that letter should ha' been found at all after such a lapse o' time. The rights of the case was these: As a younger man than now—I was six-an'-thirty at the time—I wrote to—I wrote an offer of myself in marriage to a person as was then resident i' this parish. The day but one after I wrote I had to go up to London to see to some affairs as was in the lawyer's hands relating to thy grandfather's property. He'd been dead a year or more, and the thing was only just got straight. While theer, I heard Paganini, and I've told you, more than once, I never cared to touch a bow theerafter. I found Manzini on the music-stand and closed the pages. He was open theer as I had left him, for I was a bit particular about my things, and mother used to pretend as her dursn't lay a hand upon 'em. I waited and waited for th' answer. I met the person as I had wrote to once, and bowed to her. I've remembered often and often the start her gave, as if I'd done her some sort of insult. I could never understand how or why. I did not know as I had gi'en her any right to treat me thus contemptuous. I thought her set a value upon herself beyond my deservin's, and I abode to bear it. In the course of a two-three weeks she left the parish, and I made up my mind as her'd left despising me. I won't pretend as I might not ha' found her letter if her had been less prideful and disdainous, for in the course of a little while I might ha' gone back to the music if things had gone happier with me. But it would ha' been kinder not to know the truth at all than find it out so late."

He had spoken throughout in what was meant for his customary tone of dry gravity, but it failed him often, though for a word only. At such times he would pause and cough behind his wasted hand, and these frequent breaks in the narrative made its quiet tones more touching to the hearer than any declamation or any profession of profound regret, however eloquently expressed, could possibly have been.

"Have you explained to her since you received the letter?" asked Reuben. "Don't you think, uncle, that she ought to know?"

Ezra looked at him in a faint surprise. He supposed he had guarded himself from any suspicion of betraying his old sweetheart's personality.

"Yes," he said, still bent upon this reservation. "It happens as the person I speak of came back to Heydon Hay some time ago, and was within the parish this very day. I went to make a call upon her, and to show how Providence had seen fit to deal with both of us, but her refused to exchange speech with me. You see, Reuben," he went on, coughing with a dry mildness of demeanor, "it's doubtless been upon her mind for a many years as I was making a sort of cruel and unmanly game of her. Seeing her that offstanding, it seemed to me her valued me so lowly as to take my letter for a kind of offence. It seems now as it was me, and not her, as was too prideful."

They were both silent for a time, but Reuben was the first to speak again.

"She ought to know, uncle. She should be told. Perhaps Ruth could tell her."

"My lad, my lad!" said Ezra, mournfully reproving him. "How could I tell another of a thing like this?"

"Well, sir," Reuben answered, "I know now how the idea came into her mind, though I was puzzled at first. But she is strongly opposed to my being engaged to Ruth, and came down to tell Mr. Fuller this morning that I was a villain. I am thinking of her own lonely life, and I am sure that if Ruth and I are married she will never speak again to the only relatives she has unless this is explained. For her own sake, uncle, as well as yours, I think she ought to know the truth."

He was looking downward as he spoke, and did not see the questioning air with which Ezra regarded him.

"You know who it was, then, as wrote this letter?"

"Yes," said Reuben, looking up at him. "Ruth knew the handwriting."

"Reuben!" cried the old man, sternly. He rose with more open signs of agitation than Reuben had yet seen in him, and walked hurriedly to and fro. "Reuben! Reuben!" he repeated, in a voice of keen reproach. "Ah! when was ever youth and folly separate? I never thought thee wast the lad to cry thine uncle's trouble i' the market-place!"

"No, uncle, no! Don't think that of me," cried his nephew. "I did not know what to do. I asked Ruth's advice. I could not be certain that the note was meant for you. And—guessing what I thought I guessed—I was afraid to bring it."

"Well, well! Well, well!" said Ezra. "It's been too sad an' mournful all along for me to go about to make a new quarrel on it. Let it pass. I make no doubt you acted for the best. Art too good a lad to tek pleasure in prying into the pain of an old man—as—loves thee. Leave it alone, lad. Let's think a while, and turn it over and see what may be done."

He went back to his arm-chair, and Reuben watched him in sympathetic silence.

"I know her to be bitter hard upon me in her thoughts," said Ezra, after a time. "The kind of scorn her bears for me is good for nobody, not even if it happens to be grounded i' the right. It might be a blow to her at first, but it 'ud be a blow as 'ud carry healing with it i' the long run. Let the wench tek the letter. It'll be easier for her to get it at a woman's hands."

He drew the cracked and faded letter from his waistcoat-pocket, and held it out towards Reuben without looking at him.

"I think that will be the best and kindest course, sir," said Reuben, accepting the letter and placing it in his pocket-book. "It may not be easy for Ruth to speak to her just at first, for she is very angry with her for having engaged herself to me."

"I have heard word of her opposing it," answered Ezra. "Theer are them in Heydon Hay as elsewheer—folks, without being aythur coarse-hearted or hard-minded, as talk of their neighbors' affairs, and love to tell you whatever there is to be heard as is unpleasing. I have been told as her describes me as a villin, and speaks in the same terms of you, Reuben. And that's why I advised you to speak out before there should be time to make mischief, if by any chance mischief might be made. And I've seen enough to know as theer's no staple so easy to mannyfacture as ill-will, even betwixt them as thinks well of each other. But, Reuben, even the best of women are talkers, and I look for it to be made a point on between Ruth and you, that no word of this is breathed except between your two selves."

"You may trust Ruth as much as you trust me, uncle," said Reuben.

"Like enough," answered Ezra. "And I've a warm liking for her. But there'll be no unkind-ness in naming my particular wish i' this affair."

"No, no," answered Reuben. "I will tell her what you say. You may trust us both."

"Let me know how things go," said the old man. "And good-night, Reuben."

A tender twilight still reigned outside, and Reuben, walking along the village street, could see the softened mass of roofs and chimneys and the dark green bulk of trees outlined clearly against the sky. The air was soft and still, and something in the quiet and the dimness of the hour seemed to bear a hint of memory or continuation of the scene which had just closed. He was going to see Ruth at once, and she was naturally in his mind, and presented herself as vividly there as if he had been in her presence. The old man's trouble was so much more real to a lover than it could have been to another man! If it were he and Ruth who were thus parted! There lay a whole heartache. He loved Ezra, and yet it did not seem possible to feel his grief half so well save by seeing it as his own. Such a lonely terror lay in the thought of parting from Ruth and living forever without her, that it awoke in him an actual pang of pain for his uncle's trouble.

"But," said Reuben, as he strode along, "that is what was. He felt it, no doubt, and felt it for many a dreary month. But it's over now, for the most part. I could have cried for him this morning, and again to-night, but it was more pity for the past than for the present."

Ezra had been a sad man always, since Reuben could remember him, and yet not altogether an unhappy one. The sunshine of his life had seemed veiled, but not extinguished. And could love do so little at its most unfortunate and hapless ending? For some, maybe, but surely not for Reuben! For him, if love should die, what could there be but clouds and darkness forever and always? But the old take things tranquilly, and to the young it seems that they must always have been tranquil. Uncle Ezra a lover? A possible fancy. But Ezra loving as he loved? An impossible fancy. And even six-and-thirty looked old to Reuben's eyes, for he stood a whole decade under it.

"I will go at once," said Ruth, so soon as she knew what was required of her. "I'll just tell father, and then I'll put on my hat and be ready in a minute. Will you "—with an exquisite demureness and simplicity—"will you go with me, Reuben?"

"Go and see Aunt Rachel?" cried old Fuller, when the girl had told him her intention. "Well, why not?" Ruth ran up-stairs, and Fuller waddled into the room where Reuben waited. "Ruth talks about bringin' th' ode wench back to rayson," he said, with a fat chuckle, "but that's a road Miss Blythe 'll niver travel again, I reckon. Her said good-by to rayson, and shook hands a many hears ago. It's a bit too late i' life to patch up the quarrel betwigst 'em now."

The old man's paces were so leisurely and heavy and Ruth's so quick and light that she was in the room before he had formulated this opinion, and stood at the looking-glass regarding Reuben's reflection in its dimly illumined depths as she patted and smoothed the ribbons beneath her chin.

"Let us hope not, father," she said; and then turning upon Reuben, "I am ready."

He offered her his arm and she took it. It was the simple fashion of the time and place. No engaged lovers took an airing of a dozen yards without that outward sign of the tie between them. They walked along in the soft summer evening, pitying Ezra and Rachel in gentle whispers.

"I was thinking just now if you and I should part, dear—if their case were ours!"

"Oh, Reuben!"

And so the grief of the old was a part of the joy of the young, tender-hearted as they were. They played round the mournful old history.

"But you would speak, Reuben? You would never let me go without a word?"

"And if I didn't speak, dear? If something held me back from speaking?"

"But you wouldn't let it hold you back."

"Not now, darling. But I might have done yesterday—before I knew."

Before he knew! He must have always known! But of that she would say nothing.

In front of the one village shop in which the pair of window candles still glimmered, they paused, while Reuben searched his pocket-book for the note, and then went on again, in perfumed darkness, until they reached the gate of Rachel's cottage.

"Be brave, darling," Reuben whispered here. "Don't let her repulse you easily."

Ruth entered at the gate, stole on tiptoe along the gravelled path, knocked and listened. The whole front of the little house was in darkness, but by-and-by even Reuben from his post behind the hedge heard the faint noise made by slippered feet in the oil-clothed hall. "Who's there?" said' a voice from within.

"Dear aunt," Ruth answered, "let me in. Do, please, let me in. I want to speak to you."

Reuben, listening, heard the sound of the jarring chain, and the door was opened. He peeped through the interstices of the hedge, and saw Miss Blythe smiling in the light of the candle she carried in her left hand.

"Dear niece," said Rachel, with an unusually fine and finicking accent. "Enter, you are welcome."

Ruth entered, the door was closed, and Reuben sat down on the bank outside to await his sweetheart's return.

"I understand," said Rachel. "You are welcome, my child. I detest rancor in families. I can forgive and forget." As she spoke thus she led the way into her small sitting-room. To Ruth the poor creature's unconsciousness seemed terrible. She laid her arms about Aunt Rachel's withered figure, and cried a little as she leaned upon her shoulder. "There, there," said Aunt Rachel, with a note of patronage in her voice, "compose yourself, dear child, compose yourself. I am glad to see you. Take your own time, dear child, your own time."

At this Ruth cried afresh. It was evident that Aunt Rachel supposed her here to perform an office of penitence; and it was all so pitiful to the girl's heart, which, tender enough by nature, had been made soft and more tender still by her recent talk with Reuben in the lane.

"Don't talk so. Don't speak so," she said, brokingly. "Dear aunt, read this, and then you will know why I am here."

"Ah!" sighed Aunt Rachel, with a world of meaning. "What did I tell you, my dear?" She took the letter from her niece's hand, kissed the charming bearer of it casually, as if in certainty that she would soon be comforted, and began to search for her glasses.

Ruth, understanding the old lady's error, was moved still more by it, but emotion and tender interest were at war, and she sat in a half frightened silence, piteously wondering what would happen. Rachel had found her glasses, had set the letter upon the table before her, and now drawing the candle nearer, placed the spectacles deliberately astride upon her fine little nose, snuffed the candle, and took up the cracking old bit of paper with an air of triumph and hope fulfilled which cut Ruth to the heart.

The younger woman hid her face in her hands, and furtively watched the elder through her fingers.

Rachel read but a line, and then dropping the letter stared across the candle at Ruth, and passed a hand across her forehead, brushing her glasses away in the act. She groped for them, polished them with an automatic look, and began again. Ruth, too frightened even to sob, still looked at her, and save for the rustle of the withered paper in the withered fingers the silence was complete.

"What is this?" cried Aunt Rachel, suddenly. "Why do you bring me this?" She was standing bolt upright, with both hands clasped downward on the letter.

"It was only found last night," said Ruth, rising and making a single step towards her. "From the hour you wrote it until then it was never seen. Reuben found it and brought it to me."

The old maid's face went white, and but that the chair she had thrust away from her in rising rested against the mantle-piece, she would have fallen. Ruth ran towards her and set a protecting arm about her waist. Her own tears were falling fast, and her voice was altogether broken. "It was in Manzini, the book you took Reuben's letter from. He found it there, and thought it came from me, until he saw that the paper was old, and that it did not quite answer his own letter. He took it to his uncle Ezra, and the poor old man's heart is broken. Oh, aunt, his heart is broken! He had never seen it. He had waited, waited—"

She could say no more, she was so agitated by her own words, and so stricken by the stony face before her.

Suddenly the old maid melted into tears. Reuben, sitting and waiting on the bank of the hedge without, had heard Ruth's broken voice, and now he could hear Rachel weeping. The night was without a sound, and he could hear nothing but the murmurs and sobbings from the little sitting-room. Rachel cried unrestrainedly and long, and Reuben waited with exemplary patience. At last Ruth came out and whispered to him,

"Tell father I am going to stay with Aunt Rachel to-night."

Reuben, naturally enough, would have kept her there and questioned her, but she ran back into the cottage before he could detain her, and after lingering a while bareheaded before the casket which held her, he took his way back to Fuller and gave him his daughter's message.

"Ah!" said Fuller. "At that rate it 'ud seem to be pretty well straightened out betwigst 'em. I'm glad to think it, for theer's nothin' like, harmony among them as is tied together. But hows'ever her an' the wench may mek it up, Reuben, thee'lt be a villin till the end o' the chapter." The villany attributed to Reuben and Ezra tickled the old man greatly, and his fat body was so agitated by his mirth that his legs became unequal to their burden. He had to drop into his great cushioned arm-chair to have his laugh out. "That villany o' thine 'll be the death o' me," he said, as he wiped his eyes.

Rachel and Ruth sat far into the night, and the old maid told over and over again the story of the courtship and the misunderstanding between herself and Ezra.

"Even when he was young," she told her listener often, "he was shy and proud. And he would think I had treated him as though he had been the dirt beneath my feet. I did. I did. He will never forgive me. Never, never."

She always cried afresh tempestuously at this, but when the first passion of her grief had worn itself out she came back to her story and lauded Ezra without stint. He was proud, oh yes, he was proud, but then it was not in a way to hurt anybody. He joined in the sports of the other young men when she was quite a girl, a mere chit of a thing, my dear, and he was master of them all. Then Ruth chimed in. And so was Reuben now. Reuben was not like the rest of them. He was their master in everything, and everybody who was old enough to remember said that he was more like his uncle than like his father even. The duet of praise, accompanied by the old maid's tears, murmured along for an hour.

"You will meet him now?" Ruth suggested, rather timidly. "You will be friends again?"

"We could never bear to meet each other," cried Rachel. "How could I come before him?" Then, "I must go away."

"No, no," Ruth pleaded, "you must not go away. You must stay here. You must be friends again. What shall we tell him, dear? He has found the letter at last, and he sends to you. Can you let him think that you are still against him?"

"No," said Rachel, almost wildly. "You will tell him I went away because I could not bear to see him. I ought to have known him too well to have thought so basely of him."

"It was his duty to speak to you. It was less your fault than his. It was nobody's fault. It was a disaster." Ruth thought poorly of Ezra's tactics as a lover, but she was not bent on expressing her own opinions. Reuben would never have acted in such a way. He would have known at least whether his letter had been received or no. Would any man take silent contempt as a final answer from the woman he loved? It was the man's real business to come conquering, whatever airs of gentleness he might wear. And animated by these reflections the girl became filled with impatience at the old maid's self-upbraidings. She was sorry, sorry with all her heart, for both, but if there were fault at all it lay on Ezra's side. "I shall see him in the morning," she said, finally, thinking of Reuben. "He will go to his uncle."