"Yes," said he gravely; "that's what they thought, ahem! They thought they should stay a week, they thought so, certainly."

"Wall, I declar' for't, Lovell," said Grandma; "now's the time you'd ought to have a wife. Jest to think how comf'table 'twould be fu ye, now, instead of stayin' there all alone, if ye only had a nice little wife to home, to cook for ye, and watch for ye, and keep ye company, and——"

"I think so," exclaimed Lovell, giving a quick glance backward in the direction of his gun. "Certainly, ahem! I think so. I do."

"Lookin' for game? Eh, Lovell?" inquired Grandpa.

"Pa," said Grandma, solemnly: "I wish you'd put another stick of wood in the stove."

Grandpa was awake now, and a youthful and satanic gleam shone from under his shaggy eyebrows; he glanced at me, too, as was his habit on such occasions, as though I had a sort of sympathy for and fellowship with him in his bold iniquities of speech.

But the guileless Lovell interpreted not the deeper meaning of Grandpa's words.

"I think some of it, Cap'n," he answered unsmilingly, and then continued: "It's been—ahem!—it's been a very mild winter on the—ahem!—I should say on the Cape. It's been a very mild winter on the Cape, Miss Hungerford."

Lovell's nervous glance falling again on his gun, took me in wildly on the way.

I had been directing some letters that I expected to have an opportunity to send that morning.

"I beg your pardon," I said, looking up. "Yes, you don't often have such mild winters on the Cape, Mr. Barlow!"

"No'm, we don't," said Lovell, "not very often, ahem!" He moved his chair a peg nearer the gun. "Quite a—ahem!—quite a little fall of snow we had last night, Miss Hungerford."

"Any deer tracks? Eh, Lovell?" inquired Grandpa.

"Pa," said Grandma; "I wish you'd fill Abigail—seems to me she smells sorter dry."

"She ain't, for sartin', ma," replied Grandpa, giving the tea-kettle a shake to verify his assertions; "and Rachel's chock full!"

Grandma then gave Grandpa a meaning look, and put her fingers on her lips.

"Well, Cap'n, I saw more rabbit tracks," replied Lovell, innocently amused at the ludicrousness of the old Captain's speech. "I did, rather—ahem!—yes, I saw more rabbit tracks—ahem!—ahem!" He gave his chair a desperate hitch gunward. "I don't suppose they ever do such a thing, where you live, Miss Hungerford, as to go—ahem!—to go sleigh-riding, now, do they, Miss Hungerford?"

"Why, yes," I said; "they always do in the winter. I haven't been home through the winter for a year or two past, but I remember what splendid times we used to have."

I was thinking particularly of a certain snow-fall, that came when I was seventeen years old, and John Cable had just returned from College, with a moustache and patriarchal airs.

Some grinning recollections of the past were also floating through Grandpa's mind. The look of reprehensible mirth was still in his eyes, and he showed his teeth, which gleamed oddly white and strong in contrast with his grizzled countenance.

"I remember"—he began.

"Pa," said Grandma, with an expressive wink of one eye, and only part of her face visible around the corner of the doorway, through which Madeline had already disappeared; "pa—I wish you'd come out here a minute, now—I want to see ye."

"Wall, wall, can't ye see me here, ma? What makes ye so dreadful anxious to see me all of a sudden?" inquired Grandpa. But his face did not lose its thoughtful illumination. "Wall, as I was a tellin' ye, teacher," he went on; "I was only a little shaver then—a little shaver—and my father had one of those 'ere pungs, as we used to call 'em, that he used to ride around in—and he was a dreadful man to swear, my father was, teacher—Lordy, how he would swear!——"

"Pa!" said the great calm voice at the door; "I'm a waitin' for you to come out, so't I can shet the door."

"Wall, wall, ma, shet the door if ye want to, I've no objections to havin' the door shet——and we had an old hoss, teacher. Lordy, how lean he was, lean as a skate, and——"

"Bijonah Keeler!"

"Yis, yis, I'm a comin', ma, I'm a comin'." And wonderful indeed, I thought must have been the tale, which, even under these exasperating circumstances, kept Grandpa's face a-grin as he ran and shuffled towards the door.

The door was quickly closed behind him by other hands than his own, and then I observed that Lovell's chair had been drawn into frightfully close proximity to his gun.

"I—I think it's pleasanter, that is—I—I sometimes think it's warmer for t-t-two in a sleigh, than—a—'tis—for one, don't you, Miss Hungerford?" said Lovell, and gasped for breath and continued; "Now, I think of it, you—you wouldn't think of such a thing as going to ride with me to-night, would you, Miss Hungerford? You—you wouldn't think of such a thing, would you now?"

"Why—if you are kind enough to invite me to go sleigh-riding with you, Mr. Barlow?"

"I think so;" said Lovell, grasping his gun, and becoming immediately pale, though composed. "Yes'm, I think so, certainly, I do."

"Thank you, I will go with pleasure," I said.

"Thank you, Miss Hungerford," said Lovell, rising hurriedly. "I wish you a pleasant day—I do, with pleasure, and I hope that nothing will happen to prevent!"

And Lovell marched back across the fields as valiantly as a man may, who, on occasions of doubt and peril, takes the precaution to go suitably armed.

During the day the Wallencampers indulged in a mode of recreation, suggestive of that unique sort of inspiration to which they not unfrequently fell victims.

They attached a horse to a boat, a demoralized old boat, which had hitherto occupied a modest place amid the debris surrounding the Ark, and thus equipped, they rode or sailed up and down the lane. It proved a stormy sea, and often, as the boat capsized, the air was rent with screams of mock terror and yells of unaffected delight.

Thus the youth of Wallencamp, yes, and those who heeded not the swift decline of years, by reason of the immortal freshness of their spirits, disported themselves. And I was not amazed, catching a glimpse through the school-house windows of this joyous boat on one of her return voyages up the lane, to see Grandma Keeler swaying wildly in the stern.

Meanwhile, I managed to keep my flock indoors. But when, at four o'clock, I took my ruler in hand to give the usual signal of dismissal, the Phenomenon's heels had already vanished through the window, and the repressed animal spirits of a whole barbaric epoch sounded in the whoop with which the Modoc shot through the door.

Finally, I, myself, rode up the lane in the boat. The path was well worn by this time, and there was no danger of a catastrophe. It seemed to me a novel performance enough, but I had not yet been to ride in Lovell's sleigh.

Lovell came very early, and preferred to wait outside until I had finished eating my supper. Then, with that deep self-satisfaction which predominated in my soul, even over its appreciation of the novel and amusing, I donned my seal-brown cloak, and stepping out of the door, gathered up my skirts, and smiled at Mr. Lovell with a pair of seal-brown eyes, and was not surprised to hear him ejaculate, coughing slightly; "Ahem! I think so, certainly, yes'm, I think so; I do."

Lovell's was the only sleigh in Wallencamp, and, as he informed me, it was one that he had himself constructed. It had, indeed, already suggested to my mind the workings of no ordinary intellect. Perhaps its most impressive features were its lowness and its height—the general lowness and length of its body, into which one could step easily, the floor being covered with a carpet of straw, suggesting field-mice; and the unusual height to which it rose in the back, being surmounted by two glittering knobs, like those on the head-board of an old-fashioned bedstead. Half-way down the back of this imposing structure the arms or wings sprouted out, giving to the whole the appearance of an immense Pterodactyl, or some other fossil bird of fabulous proportions, and Effectually shutting in the occupants of the sleigh from any Contemplation of the possible charms of the scenery. The seat was made very low, and it was, perhaps, on this account that the horse seemed so abnormally high. It was a white horse, and from our lowly position, there seemed to be something awful and shadowy in the motions of its legs. The red of sunset had not gone out of the sky when we started, and a pale young moon was already getting up in the heavens, but we could see neither fading sky nor rising moon, nor rock, nor tree, nor snowy expanse, naught but the gigantic hoof-falls of our phantom steed.

Being thus hopelessly debarred from any communication with external nature, and fearing to give myself up to my own thoughts, which were of a somewhat dangerous character, I endeavored to engage my companion in lively and cheerful converse by the way; but he was in a position of actual physical suffering, for the reins were short—too short, that is, to form a happy connecting link between him and the horse, and poor Lovell was obliged to lean forward at an acute angle in order to grasp them at all. Whenever the ghostly quadruped made a plunge forward, as he not unfrequently did, Lovell was thrust violently down into the straw, and throughout all this he comported himself with such firm and hopeless dignity that, with the respect due to suffering, I was moved to witness the struggle, at length, with silent commiseration. Once, having kept his seat for a longer time than usual, Lovell said:—

"I'll give you a riddle, Miss Hungerford, I will. Ahem! 'Why—why does a hen go around the road,' Miss Hungerford?"

I posed my head in an attitude of deep thought.

"Because," Lovell hastened to say; "because she can't go across—no, that wasn't right—why—ahem! why does a hen go across the road, Miss Hungerford?" and the next instant he was wallowing in the straw at my feet.

My soul was filled with unutterable compassion for him.

"Because," I ventured, when Lovell reappeared again, affecting a tone of lively inspiration: "because she can't go around it?"

"You—you've heard of it before!" gravely protested Lovell.

"I confess," said I, "that I have. It used to be my favorite riddle."

"It—it used to be mine, too," said Lovell. "It used to be, Miss Hungerford—ahem! It used to be—You—you couldn't tell what I was thinking of when I—ahem—when I started from home to-night, now, could you, Miss Hungerford?" said Lovell, at length.

"I'm sure I couldn't, Mr. Barlow," said I: "but I hope it was something very agreeable."

"But it wasn't," said Lovell; "that is, not very, Miss Hungerford; ahem! not very. I was—I was—ahem! I was thinking of it, you know, of—of such a thing as getting married, you know."

"I hope," said I, cheerfully, after a pause; "that as you consider the subject longer, it will be a less painful one to you."

"I hope so, Miss Hungerford," said Lovell. "Ahem! I hope so, certainly;" but there was little of that sanguine quality expressed in his tones.

The great white horse made another plunge forward, and Lovell recovered himself with a desperate effort.

"What should you think now, Miss Hungerford," he continued, moistening his parched lips; "if I should do such a thing as to—ahem!—as to speak of such a thing as—ahem!—as something of that sort to you, now, Miss Hungerford? Now, what should you think of such a thing? now, really?"

"I should think you were very inconsiderate," I said, "and would probably regret your rashness afterwards."

"I think so," said Lovell; "ahem! I think so, Miss Hungerford; I do, certainly."

After this it seemed as though a weight had been lifted from Lovell's mind. He kept his seat better. His was not a buoyant spirit, but there was, on this occasion, an air of repressed cheerfulness about him such as I had never before seen him exhibit. I tried to think that it was a joyous mental rebound from the contemplation of those dark riddles which trouble humanity, "Why does the hen go across the road," etc.

After a brief pause, Lovell said; "You—you wouldn't mind if I should sing a little now, now would you, Miss Hungerford?"

I assured him that I should be very glad to have him do so, and he sang, I remember, all the rest of the way home. At the gate, I thanked him for the ride and its cheerful vocal accompaniment, and Lovell said; "Do you like to hear me sing, now? Do you—do you, really, now, Miss Hungerford?" and turned away with a smile on his face to seek his home by the sea.

But Lovell was not long lonely, for, in less than a week, his father and mother returned from their visit at Aunt Marcia's and brought to Lovell a wife.

Mrs. Barlow herself informed me that "it was an awful shock to him, at first, oh, dreadful! but he'd made up his mind to get married, and he'd never a' done it in the world, if we hadn't took it into our own hands. She was a good girl, and we knew it, and Lovell wasn't no more fit to pick out a wife, anyway, than a chicken, not a bit more fit than a chicken!"

This girl lived in the same town with Aunt Marcia, and was confidently recommended by her to Lovell's parents as one who would be likely to make him a wise and suitable helpmeet, and was, indeed, an uncommonly fair and wholesome looking individual. She had a mind, too, whose clear, practical common sense had never been obscured by the idle theories of romance. She was pure and hearty and substantial. She was neither diffident, nor slow of speech, nor vacillating. She came, at the invitation of Lovell's parents, to marry Lovell, and if he had refused, she would have boxed his ears as a wholesome means of correction, and married him on the spot.

So Lovell's destined wife was brought home to him in the morning, and in the afternoon of that same day the connubial knot was tied.

Half an hour after the arrival of the bride, it was known throughout the length and breadth of Wallencamp, to every one, I believe, save Lovell himself, who was gathering driftwood a mile or two down the beach, that Lovell was going to be married!

At three o'clock P.M., Brother Mark Barlow was despatched to West Wallen for a minister.

Small scouts had been sent out to watch, where the road from the beach winds into the main road, and when word was brought back that "Mark had gone by," the Wallencampers proceeded to make all due preparations; and soon might have been seen winding in a body towards the scene of interest.

The small paraphernalia of invitations and wedding cards were unknown in Wallencamp. The Wallencampers would have considered that there was little virtue in a ceremony of any sort, performed without the sanction and approval of their united presence.

In regard to the particular nature of this entertainment, there was some snickering in the corners of the room, but the general aspect was funereal.

The season during which, with Lovell at one end of the room, and the bride at the other, we sat waiting the arrival of the minister, was as solemn as anything I had ever known.

I made a congratulatory remark, in a low tone, to Mrs. Barlow, who sat at my side with her hands clasped gazing first at Lovell and then at the bride; but I was forced to experience the uncomfortable sensation of one who has inadvertently spoken out loud in meeting. No one said anything.

The helpless snicker which started occasionally from Harvey Dole's corner, and was echoed faintly from other quarters of the room, only heightened, by, contrast, the effect of the succeeding gloom.

The bride was perfectly composed, with a high, natural color in her cheeks, and an air of being duly impressed with the importance of the occasion.

She had assumed a large white bonnet, though I do not think that she and Lovell took so much as a stroll to the beach after the ceremony—and her plump and shapely hands were encased in a pair of green kid gloves. She gazed thoughtfully, at each occupant of the room in turn, not omitting Lovell, who never once stirred or lifted his eyes.

Mr. William Barlow was silently passing the water, when Brother Mark arrived with the minister.

That grave dignitary advanced with measured tread to a small stand, draped with a long white sheet, that had been prepared for him in the centre of the room.

He took off his gloves, and folded them; he took off his overcoat, and laid it on the back of a chair; and if he had then reached down into his pockets and taken out a rope, and proceeded to adjust a hanging-noose, his audience could not have shown a more ghastly and breathless interest in his performance.

"Will the parties"—his sonorous voice resounded through the awful stillness—"Will the parties—about—to be joined—in holy wedlock—now—come forward?"

As Lovell then arose and walked, with an automatic hitch in his legs, across the room to his bride, there was about him all the stiffness and pallor of the grave without its smile of peace.

"Lovell and Nancy"—arose the deep intonation—will you—now—join hands?

It was a warm strong hand in the green kid glove. Its grasp might have sent a thrill of life through Lovell's rigid frame, for when the minister inquired:

"And do you, Lovell, take this woman?" etc., etc.

Lovell bent his body, moved his lips, and replied in a strange, far-away tone, "Yes'm, I think so. I do, certainly."

But when the question was put to the bride, she, Nancy, promised to take Lovell to be her wedded husband, to love and cherish, yes, and to cleave to, with a round, full "I do," that left no possible room for doubt in the mind of any one present, and seemed to send back the flood of frozen terror to Lovell's veins.

Lovell and Nancy were pronounced man and wife, and Nancy then divested herself of her bonnet and gloves, and joined in the festivities which followed with a hearty good-will, that proved her to be quite at home among the Wallencampers, and won at once their affection and esteem. The manner, particularly, in which she carried beans from her plate to her mouth, gracefully balanced on the extreme verge of her knife, as an adroit and finished work of art, provoked the wonder and admiration of all those whose beans sometimes wandered and fell off by the way.

And all the while, Mrs. Barlow's adjectives flowed in a full and copious stream.

"Oh, Lovell had been so wild," she said to me. "Oh, dreadful! But didn't I think he looked like a husband now? So quick, too! Oh, yes, wasn't it beautiful! Abbie Ann said he looked as though he'd been a husband fifteen years!"

After the ceremony, Lovell had taken his pipe and retired a little from the active scenes which were being enacted around him.

I saw him, as I was going away, standing in the door and looking out upon the bay. I held out my hand to him, in passing. "I congratulate you, Mr. Barlow," I said. Lovell put his hand to his mouth and coughed slightly several times, as though he were striving to think of the polite thing to say. Then he replied: "I—I—ahem! I wish you the same, Miss Hungerford, I do, certainly."

Lovell was not so pale as he had been, but looked very serious and pensive with his eyes fixed on the mysterious depths of the ocean. Lovell had propounded riddles to me, but never before had I caught such a glimpse of the deeply philosophical workings of his mind.

"When you come to think of it, life—ahem—life is very uncertain, Miss Hungerford."

I replied that it was very uncertain.

"And short, too, when you come to think of it. It's very short, too, Miss Hungerford."

"Oh, yes," I answered, "very."

"Ahem! It was—it was dreadful sudden, somehow," said Lovell.

"I suppose so, Mr. Barlow," I replied gravely; "great and unexpected joys are sometimes said to be as benumbing in their first effects as griefs coming in the same way."

"I think so," said Lovell. "Ahem! I think so, Miss Hungerford, I do, certainly."

Madeline joined me at the door, and I bade Lovell good-night.

We clambered down the cliffs, walking a little while along on the beach on our way homeward.

It was growing dark, and the voice of the ocean was infinitely mournful and sublime. No wonder, I thought, that life had seemed very short and uncertain to Lovell as he stood in the door listening to the waves.

What a little thing it seemed indeed, comparatively—this life with its fears and hopes, its poor idle jests and fleeting shows.

"And there shall be no more sea"—but this poor human soul that looks out so blindly, and utters itself so feebly through the senses, shall live for ever and ever.

"Lovell's folks have picked out a good wife for him, anyhow," said Madeline, briskly. "She's got a sight more sense than anybody he'd ever a' picked out."

I crept back into my shell again. "I think so, certainly, Madeline," said I, smiling at having unconsciously repeated Lovell's favorite phrase.

"She'll make Lovell all over, and get some new ideas into him, I can tell you," said Madeline.

And though I did not stay in Wallencamp long enough to witness with my own eyes the fulfillment of this prophecy, I know that it was abundantly fulfilled—that Lovell soon recovered from the shock incident to his wedding; that under the influence of his wholesome, active wife, and with the weight of greater responsibilities, he grew more manly and admirable in character, as well as happier, with each succeeding year; and that Lovell's children—a joyful and robust group, adored of Mrs. Barlow, senior—play on the "broad window seat" that looks off towards the sea.



CHAPTER X.

A LETTER FROM THE FISHERMAN.

The fisherman had gone back to Providence. Rebecca, herself, returning from the Post Office at West Wallen, brought me a letter distinguished by its peculiar dashing chirography. As she handed it to me, the girl, whose glance had been downcast of late, gave me a clear, straightforward, unembarrassed look.

"Do you like him, teacher?" she said.

"Oh, I tolerate him, my dear," I answered. "We're not expected to entertain a particular liking or dislike for everybody we know. There are a great many people we must just simply tolerate."

Rebecca's eyes fell again. "He won't harm you, teacher," she said; "for you was used to folks. Sometime you might remember—I wasn't used to folks."

Occupied with my own thoughts, I passed lightly over the girl's slow, trembling speech. She turned away, and I bent to the complacent perusal of my letter. In my then composed and exalted frame of mind its contents were not calculated to create in me either great emotion or surprise. And not because the mere fact of the fisherman's absence had suddenly rendered him more desirable in my eyes, but as the result of a recent determination on my part to take an utterly worldly and practical view of life, I resolved to give this letter the most careful and serious consideration.

The fisherman was of good family, and he was rich; these statements, artistically interwoven by him with the lighter fabric of his letter, were confirmed by an acquaintance of mine in Providence, of whom, in writing, I had incidentally inquired concerning the gentleman.

Respectability and wealth—items not supposed to weigh too heavily with the romantic mind of youth—but I believed that I was no longer either young or romantic. Moreover, I was slowly realizing the fact that school-teaching in Wallencamp was not likely to furnish me the means for making an excessively brilliant personal display, nor for carrying out to any extent my subordinate plans for a world-wide philanthropy.

"Perhaps, after all then," I argued; "it is only left for me to give up my ideas about being unique and independent and sublime, 'take up with a good offer,' and step resolutely, without any sentimental awe, into the great orderly ranks of the married sisterhood."

My life had been but a varied list of surprises to my family and acquaintances, why not effect the crowning surprise of all, by doing something they might have expected of me?

Well, I had dreamed of higher things—but this was a strange, restless, disappointing world. If one saw a plain path open before one's feet, one might as well walk quietly along that way. There were thorns in every path, and it would be nice to be rich, very rich.

My thoughts wandered through a wide field of imaginary delight, encountering only one serious obstacle in the way of their elysium, and that was the fisherman himself considered as a life-long escort and companion.

In my youthful dreams, I had cherished, to be sure, a score of mild Arthur Greys and stern Stephen Montgomerys. My Arthurs had all died of inherited consumption. I had taken leave of their departing spirits under the most thrilling circumstances, having frequently been married to them at their deathbeds, and had lived but to plant flowers on their graves and wear crape for them ever afterwards; and my dark-browed Stephen Montgomerys had all gone to swell the avenging tide of righteous war, and had been fatally shot, while I remained to shed tears of unavailing grief over the locks of raven hair they left with me on the morning of their departure. But to marry a real, live, omnipresent man—a man, with red hair, sound lungs, and no wars to go to! My aspiring soul shrank from the realistic vision.

And all the while a tenderer vision would rise before my eyes, clothed with its pitiful romance—the Cradlebow, like some sadly out-of-fashion guest, arising unsolicited out of a half-forgotten dreamland, passing indeed both the ideal strength of the warlike Stephen and the gentleness of the saintly Arthur, but, alas! so crude, so unworldly, so ridiculously poor! And the vision extended and then narrowed helplessly to a home in one of the forlorn houses in Wallencamp by the sea, with its dingy walls and bare floors, its general confusion of objects and misery, and my lord's grand eyes obscured, perchance, behind clouds of tobacco smoke, while I set the scanty table and fried the briny herrings.

With a shudder for romance, I returned to the contemplation of wealth and respectability; and took up graciously, once more, the briefly abandoned idea of duty.

I had often been told that it was my duty to accommodate myself to other people's views. Perhaps I should accomplish my designs for self-immolation, and thus, in one sense, effect my highest spiritual good, by marrying the fisherman and accommodating myself to his views—ah! but how could that be, I reflected, unsmilingly, when my views were so infinitely superior to his!

I wondered, for one thing, why he should have entertained, of late, such an excessive dislike for Wallencamp and its inhabitants. The natural beauty of Wallencamp had impressed me daily more and more, and the people were harmless, to say the least. I thought he should have enjoyed them; he had a humorous vein; he was not too snobbish; and he seemed of a nature to wish to make himself generally agreeable to people; but for these special objects of my care he had expressed only derision and contempt, with often a touch of positive malice; and had not been able to abstain from giving me a hard cut or two on my mission, barely avoiding it in his letter, and rejoicing with what seemed to me an unwarrantable warmth in the hope that I should soon quit forever the abominable place.

Then, in my miserable short-sightedness, my thoughts wandered indirectly to Rebecca. I wondered if she had taken to heart anything in the acquaintance she was said to have had with Mr. Rollin, before I came to Wallencamp, which had caused the change in her. I did not believe she had. The girl was too artless and simple to have concealed so completely the resentment she would naturally have cherished—too childish to have borne it so silently. As far as the fisherman was implicated in the affair, even if he had trifled a little for his own amusement with the vague impulses, possibly the affections, of this unsophisticated girl, the act was by no means unprecedented among people of wealth and respectability. It was a diversion in which Arthur Grey and Stephen Montgomery would not have indulged, perhaps, "but this," I mused, "is a sadly commonplace sort of world, viewed in the broad daylight of wisdom and experience (and with such penetrating rays I felt my own optics to be only too wearily oppressed); we must give up our high ideals, take people as we find then, and submit gracefully to the inevitable."

Still I was in as much of a quandary as ever as to what I should choose to consider the inevitable in my own path. It never occurred to me in this dilemma to seek advice from the elder members of my own family. They knew nothing really of my situation in Wallencamp, and even if they had been informed more truthfully in regard to it, I thought they could hardly be expected to appreciate the peculiarly trying circumstances in which I was placed just at present.

Mothers were excellent for mending gloves, taking ink stains out of white dresses with lemon juice, etc., etc.; but there were certain exigencies in the remote and exalted life of those who go on "missions" which their humble though loving skill must ever fail to reach.

I did write home, by the way, for more spending-money. I had been obliged to send to Boston for a few of the latest novels, fresh ribbons, cologne water, and various other articles indispensable to the career of a truly devoted propagandist. I preferred my request no longer as the dependent offspring seeking gifts from a fond and indulgent parent, but as the solicitor of a mere temporary loan, until I should be able to draw on my salary at the close of the term.

One morning, having inured myself to extreme worldliness of soul and begun a deliberately reckless response to the fisherman's letter, I looked out through my window to see the Cradlebow trudging manfully down the lane, with a grotesquely antiquated portmanteau in his hand, and the general air of one who has started a-foot on a journey.

With a singular readiness to be diverted, I found that the picture was, somehow, not conducive to further worldliness of meditation; and when in the evening, Mrs. Cradlebow came in to call, in her mantilla, the impression thus made on my mind was inexpressibly deepened.

Mrs. Cradlebow was not a frequent caller. She had almost earned among the Wallencampers the direful anathema of "not being neighborly."

She informed me, while the singers were gathered, as usual, at the Ark, that Luther had gone to make farewell visits to his friends. He had three married sisters living in different parts of the State. They had children. The children were very fond of him, and he was going on such a long voyage. Mrs. Cradlebow was looking beyond the singers, her eyes shining clear and sad above the pathetic smile on her lips—

"And he says he shan't come back again until he comes to give me such pleasure as I never dreamed of."

Those words come to me now, either as part of the endless mockery of life, or as strains of hidden music, deep and true, running ever beneath the world's dull misinterpretation.

Afterwards, the choir of voices in the room formed an effectual shield for confidential conversation.

"You don't know what a good boy he's always been to me, teacher," Mrs. Cradlebow continued, with a manner unusual to her, I thought, as of one seeking for sympathy; "so that I've learned to depend so much on him, more, I think, than on anybody else. Some boys when they're growing up so, they feel independent and they answer you back short, but the older he grew, the gentler he was to me, always, and if he had any trouble, it never made him cross to me; and I think it's harder to see anybody so than if they was cross, for he's quick in ways, I know, but when things go real hard against him, he's patient."

"He ought not to know much about trouble yet," I answered hopefully, with the consciousness of one who has fathomed all the mysteries of grief and can yet speak gayly of the forlorn background.

"He doesn't know enough about the world, I'm afraid," said Mrs. Cradlebow, and her eyes, fixed on my face, seemed to me to be looking gently into my inmost heart. "He expects so much, and he never looks out for himself. I wish he'd be content to go fishing with the other boys—they always come back in the autumn—and not want to sail so far."

I was almost angry because of the embarrassment I felt under that clear glance.



"Don't you think, Mrs. Cradlebow," I said nervously; "that young people are never content until they find out the world for themselves?" It was an interrogation, but it was sagely uttered.

"I know, I know," she said. "Perhaps it's best he should go." She spoke very quietly and with uncommon composure of demeanor. She withdrew her eyes from my face, but the smile trembled on her lips, and I knew that her heart was breaking over the words, for Luther was her darling.

I wished, almost impatiently, for my own part, that it might all have happened differently; that I might leave everything in Wallencamp just as I had found it, so delightfully happy and peaceful it had seemed to me. I could not bear, in looking back, to think of one face as wearing upon it any unaccustomed grief. At all events, I felt that my thoughts had been helplessly turned from their prescribed channel, and the fisherman's letter remained from day to day still unanswered.

Meanwhile, winter was vanishing at the Cape. As salient points in its quaint and cherished memory, I recall the frequent clamming excursions, when we rattled own to the beach, at low-tide, in a cart whose groaning members lacked every element of elasticity. Often there were as many as sixteen persons in one cart, and the same number of hoes and baskets—the baskets being filled with small children as a means of keeping both them and the children stationary.

Grandma was always present on these occasions, and the hilarity of the Wallencampers, as they were jounced and joggled over the stones, in a manner which to some might have been productive of great bodily agony, concealed, with them, no undercurrent of nervous dread or pain. They were kind enough to regard the presence of the "teacher" as indispensable to their complete enjoyment, while I was ready to congratulate myself that my society alone was the object desired, for though I brought my near-sighted vision to bear faithfully upon the sands, I never succeeded in capturing a clam.

I heard that Bachelor Lot had confided aside to Captain Sartell that "Teacher'd ought to bring a hook and line. The clams 'ud go for it in a minute if she'd only bring a hook and line;" and, stung by the unsheathed sarcasm of this remark, I was accustomed afterwards to wander off towards "Steeple Rock." The rock was accessible at low-tide, and from thence I could watch the ocean on one side, and the clam-diggers on the other; could see Grandma on her hands and knees, a dot of broad good nature in the distance, always remaining apparently in the one place, and always, somehow, getting her basket full of clams as she gradually sank deeper and deeper into the briny soil; but no true Wallencamper ever caught cold by soaking in the brine.

I could distinguish Madeline wandering lightly about among the rocks, scraping off mussels with her hoe; and the Modoc, the champion clam-digger of all, spreading her tentacles here and there, and never failing to come up with a bivalve. It was a picturesque scene, viewed from the great rock; and when the tide began to sweep in again, George Olver sent a piercing whistle along shore, to call the stragglers together; clams, children, and all were loaded into the cart, and jostled gayly homeward erased by the fresh sea breezes.

For the chowder, which in due course of events arose to take its place among the viands on the Ark board, I would leave it to that sacred and tenfold mystery with which, to my mind, it was ever enshrouded.

* * * * *

I recall the exhibitions held at the school-house, confined exclusively to the native talent of Wallencamp, at which the old and young were assembled to speak pieces.

It was then that Aunt Rhoda and Aunt Cinthia, matrons of portly frame and perilous foothold, engaged in a metrical dialogue concerning the robbing of a bird's nest, in which lively diversion they assumed to have participated. And Bachelor Lot rendered "My beautiful Annabel Lee" with unique effect; and Grandma Keeler spoke mysteriously though hopefully of—

"Hope and Harnah Double-decked schooner Cap'n John Homer Marster and owner Bound for Bermudy."

The strange effect produced upon me by the first of these rhetorical entertainments is still as fresh in my mind as though it had been yesterday, so luminous was the night with stars; so loud and prolonged the preliminary blowing of the horn; so festive the appearance of the school-house, loaded as it was with evergreens; so abnormal the proportions of the stage, which had been extended to comprise nearly two-thirds of the school-room.

It comes to me again, the first shock of surprise at finding all Wallencamp on the stage, Grandpa and I, alone, being left like ostracized owls among the shrubbery of the auditorium. Our sense of isolation was only intensified by hearing the sounds of mirth which proceeded from the other side of the curtain, and seeing a foot or an elbow occasionally thrust out into our own green though silent realm.

Thrice Aunt Rhoda appeared before the curtain to proclaim in pregnant tones, "We are now awaiting for Josiah and Annie."

Josiah, by the way, had married a Wallencamp girl and taken her to West Wallen to live, yet the two were ever faithful attendants at the Wallencamp festivities.

"Declaration" after "declaration" was announced by Aunt Rhoda, and as the declaimers finished their parts, they descended to sit with us, until at last the curtain was drawn aside, revealing Madeline, alone upon the stage, seated at her "music."

She opened the Hymnal, and struck the leading chord, mid straightway, from the Wallencampers, all gathered now below, there arose a burst of melody as it had been one mighty voice.



CHAPTER XI.

A WALLENCAMP FUNERAL.

Mr. 'Lihu Dole—Harvey's father—lay dying, and all the Wallencampers were assembled in and about the house.

It was night, and one was going out from among them to launch his lonely bark on a deeper, more mysterious ocean than that whose moan came up to them from behind the cedars. There was awe on their faces, and a touch of terror, too, but above all there was a strange, childlike wonder.

They had seen death before. It might come to them at any time, they knew. Its spirit sounded in the dirges of the waves along the shore, yet, none the less, for time or fate, or moan of solemn wave, grew this exceeding mystery.

Was it like a cold black flood, to die at night, and no stars shining—a cold flood creeping more and more above the heart? Oh, the wonder on those poor faces, if there might be, indeed, some fairer harbor lights beyond death's tide, and gentler music lulling the dread surge, so that the voyager, with untold joy at last, felt the worn boat-keel loosen on the strand and drift off from this shore!

Emily and Aunt Cinthia were alone in the room with the dying man. They were his sisters. His wife had been dead for years.

In the adjoining room sat a group of females, a single candle burning dimly on a table in their midst. Grandma Bartlett was there, and Grandma Keeler, and Aunt Sibylla Cradlebow.

Occasionally, a whisper from one of these three pierced the gloom, a whisper appropriately sepulchral in tone, but more penetrating than any voice of buoyant life and hope.

I sat in the door with Madeline, Rebecca on the step below, very still and thoughtful.

The men and the young people, for the most part, were waiting about outside.

I caught the low murmur of a discussion between Captain Sartell and Bachelor Lot, who were sitting on the fence, and knew by the attitude of the listeners gathered around them, that the subject was one of no ordinary interest. I could not help wondering what those two argued concerning death and the immortality of the soul.

The tick! tick! tick! of the clock sounded with persistent distinctness in the room where the women sat, and Grandma Bartlett sighed, and then came the awful whisper:—

"Ah, death's vary sahd—vary sahd."

Grandma Bartlett, superannuated as she was, was the most trite of the Wallencampers.

Aunt Sibylla Cradlebow accepted the lifeless phrase with something almost like a smile of disdain in her magnificent eyes.

"Oh, it's like everything else," she whispered. "It's a mixter! It's a mixter!"

Once the door of the little bedroom opened softly, and Emily appeared on the scene.

"He's got most to the end of his rope," she said, dryly, in answer to the inquiring faces lifted to her own. There was an unnatural brightness in Emily's tearless eyes, and her tone was as sprightly as ever.

"He don't see nothin', and he don't feel nothin', and he don't hear nothin'," she continued; "and it's sech poor work a breathin', he's most give that up, too. It might stop any minute and he not know it. Cinthy's cryin'; I don't see nothin' to cry about. It'll storm before to-morrow, likely—it's dark enough, Lord knows—and them east winds always hurt him so. 'I don't know whether he's worse off, or better off, Cinthy,' says I, 'or whether he's off entirety. But I don't believe a righteous God'll make poor 'Lihu suffer any worse than he has in the last ten weeks.' But it's strange, all the time I was a' sittin' there by him, when he was worst, it kept comin' up before me, jest as he was when he was a little boy. I hadn't thought on him so for years, but it seemed jest as though 'twas back in New Hampshire, where we was born, a' playin' around the old mill again. Him and me was the youngest, we was always together, and I couldn't 'a' called him up so before me, to save me; but there he was, as plain as life, with his little blue checked apron on, a skippin' along towards me over the logs, and his eyes a dancin', and the wind a blowin' his hair out; and all the while I couldn't help a knowin' that 'Lihu was a man grown, a dyin' there before me on the bed.

"'Seems as though a man that's been a wearin' out as long as he has had ought to die easier, Cinthy,' says I. 'It's pretty hard to have forty years' consumption, and then go off with a fever,' 'We can't question the Lord's doin's,' says Cinthy. But for all that, she wouldn't stay in the room to see him. He couldn't ketch his breath and he was as crazy as a loon. Lord, how he worried! All day, yesterday, he was a loadin' ship down to the shore. It would a' made your bones ache to hear him workin' so; and all night long he was a loadin', and a loadin.' Thinks I, won't there never be no end to this, for I felt hard, and him a loadin' and a loadin' all through them long hours, jest as faithful as life, with his eyes like blood, and the sweat a rollin' off'n him. He couldn't stand that forever. This mornin' the pain sorter left him, but there was that one idee on his mind. The ship was all loaded, and he'd got to wait for high tide to git it off, and he wanted to go to sleep, but he couldn't, because he'd got to watch the tide.

"'Oh, if I could only rest, now,' he kep' a savin', weak and slow. 'If I could only go to sleep now;' and so he moaned and moaned.

"So I got close to his ear and I says, 'You go to sleep, now, 'Lihu, and I'll watch,' I says; 'I'll wake you up when it's high tide,' I says; but he only shook his head. So then, I says, 'Aint there none o' the folks you can trust to watch?' And he shook his head, and so he moaned and moaned.

"By and by, all of a sudden, 'Lihu looked up at me different, with his eyes wide open, so that for a minute, I was most fool enough to think 'Lihu was gittin' well, and he smiled as though he wanted to say something. So I leant over. 'I—know—somebody,' he says, as slow as that, for he was all worn out. 'Who then, 'Lihu?' says I. 'Jesus,' says he, with that queer, smilin' look, as though it was the naturalest thing on earth. 'He'll—wake—me—up—when—', and he couldn't wait no longer, his head fell over as heavy as a log, and that's the way he's been ever since, sleepin' like death.

"Wall, Cinthy thinks somebody'd ought to come in and make a prayer. 'He wasn't a perfessor,' says she. 'Lord knows, if he had a been,' says I, 'there'd be more need on't!' 'Anyway,' says I, 'he can't hear nothin', it won't do him no harm.' So I thought I'd come out and see. It'll make Cinthy feel easier."

There was a whispered consultation among the women, but Emily came over to where I sat.

"Come, teacher," said she. "Your voice ain't as raspin' as some, and you've got a knack o' stringin' words together, that sound likely, and don't hit nobody—you come in."

"Hush!" I cried, grasping the woman's hand, thinking only, then, that it would seem like sacrilege for any one to speak aloud in the room where one was waiting for Christ to wake him. I had forgotten at that moment that I was out of the habit of praying, even for myself. Emily's tale had moved me so, it seemed only its sweet and fitting consummation, and nothing incredible to my mind then, that Christ should come down out of the starless sky to touch that heavy sleeper's brow.

It was finally decided that there should be a quiet little prayer-meeting in the room where the women sat, in behalf of Mr. 'Lihu's soul; but before all the preliminary steps had been taken, and the men and youth noiselessly ingathered, Mr. 'Lihu's breathing had ceased, without a parting pang or gasp, and the tide was at its full.

Harvey had been standing with a group near the door. Once at some irrelevancy in the proceedings, while the women were organizing the prayer-meeting, I heard his irrepressible little giggle creeping in; but when the words so mysteriously uttered were passed out to him—"Lihu's gone!"—the poor boy, realizing only at that instant their terrible meaning, that his father had indeed gone, gone away from him forever, ran forward a pace or two, and then fell, with his face to the ground.

So he lay, shaking and sobbing helplessly.

Grandma Bartlett, standing in the door, studied him for some moments with her fossilized eyes:—

"Fatherless and motherless, now," said she. "Poor creetur, humph! Vary sahd."

Then she blinked, and, simultaneously, the subject seemed to have slipped from her mind, and she to have become vaguely contemplative concerning worlds and ages remote.

The boy was still lying prone on the ground, when I left the place of mourning with Grandma and Madeline. I spoke to him, and shrank instinctively from his face as he turned it towards me. It was swollen and disfigured with weeping. He had bruised it, too, in falling. He rose, trembling, and walked with me. For my own part, the emotional had given place to feelings of a more sustained and ordinary nature.

I strove to impress upon Harvey's mind the beautiful and poetic manner in which his father had been released from his sufferings.

I reminded him of the shortness of life, "even from your point of view, Harvey;" and the necessity there was always, for not allowing ourselves to be overcome by our griefs or passions, or diverted from the supreme satisfaction of performing our appointed tasks, etc.

And Harvey listened patiently throughout, and said "good night," with a brave attempt at a smile, and a sob still choking in his throat.

I turned an instant, to look at him as he walked away. He wore, generally, a coat of ministerial form and complexion; this, taken in connection with his round, laughing face, his boyish figure, and propensity for playing tricks, had often made me smile, hitherto. But, now, there was something in the attitude of those long, black tails that brought the tears to my eyes.

It occurred to me, indirectly, what Emily had said about my stringing words together, and I marvelled if possibly my exhortation had soared over poor Harvey's head and left his heart aching for an ordinary word of sympathy, or a simple reference to One who as a man of sorrows, was best fitted to understand and console his grief. To any sentiments of the latter nature, Harvey was particularly susceptible.

"Children, all of them!" Thus gently apostrophizing the Wallencampers, I dismissed the cause of my brief mental discomfiture, with a half-pitying smile.

The day after Mr. 'Lihu's death, I looked down from my desk in school to see the infant Sophronia weeping bitterly.

"What is the matter, Sophronia?" I said.

"Carietta's been to see the cops twice," she sobbed; "and I ain't been any."

I only gathered from this that Carietta was somehow implicated as being the cause of the infant Sophronia's sufferings.

"Now," said I gravely; "tell me what you mean?"

"She means the cops!" cried Carietta, her small face distorted with a leer of the most horrid satisfaction, "'Lihu's cops. 'Phrony means the——"

"That will do," I said. "I understand you perfectly. I understand you only too well. This is about as bad," I reflected; "as anything in my experience."

After admonishing my pupils with that sincere emotion to which the occasion had given rise, that they should speak always respectfully of their elders, but especially in the most tender and solemn tones of the dead; after pointing out to them the perniciousness of a low and vulgar curiosity, and expatiating on the vastness and superiority of the spiritual life, compared with the earthly and carnal, I paused, only to give, further on, a fuller illustration to my words, and said:—

"Now, Sophronia, you have an immortal soul?"

There was evidence of some faint hankering in Sophronia's face as she mentally ran over the list of her possessions.

"No'm," said she; "I hain't—but I've got a cornycopia!"

I think it was then and there that my hopes for the elevation of juvenile Wallencamp received their deathblow, and my labors, which had before been cheered by a dream of partially satisfying success, at least, took on an utterly goal-less and prosaical form.

These children, I was forced to admit, regarded the day of Mr. 'Lihu's funeral as a holiday of rare and special interest, mysteriously bestowed by Heaven.

Aunt Rhoda had previously informed me that it was expected I would have no school that afternoon.

The West Wallen minister officiated on the occasion with an aspect neither more nor less funereal than he had worn at Lovell's wedding. He spoke in such a labored, trumpet-like tone of voice that the Wallencampers seemed, at first, inspired with a lively hope, expecting momentarily that his breath would give out, but in this they were doomed to ever-increasing disappointment.

At length, Captain Sartell drew a bucketful of fresh water from the well, and passed it around the room, winking expansively at each individual in turn, by way of silent encouragement and support.

Grandma Bartlett, observing the generally tearless aspect of the community, conscientiously attempted to weep, but being entirely out of tears, at her time of life, she only succeeded in screwing her face up into what, in earlier years, might have appeared as a lachrymose expression, but now took the shape of a fixed and ogreish grin.

The infant Sophronia was seated on a bench of an exceedingly temporary nature, between Grandma Keeler and Aunt Lobelia, both persons of weight, and it so chanced, or, rather, it followed as a matter of course, an equal pressure being applied to both sides, that the board sustaining the three, broke directly under that diminutive victim of fate, awaking her thereby from feverish slumber; and whether the infant Sophronia had an immortal soul or not, no one there present could doubt that she possessed an uncommon pair of lungs.

The little room where we sat was hot and overcrowded, and the thought was running in my mind continually. "Poor, restless Wallencampers! and how happy Mr. 'Lihu is not to have any connection with his funeral."

When the procession was about to start for the burying-ground, the request was made to me that I would blow the horn, even as the bell is usually tolled on such occasions, for it would seem inappropriate for one of the Wallencampers to do so, they all having been related to the deceased.

At such a time, I could not refuse, though the emotions with which I crossed over to the school-house to perform this grim duty, were of a nature best known to, and appreciated by, myself. My terror of the Wallencamp horn had waxed daily. I believed that there was nothing in the whole world of inanimate things on which I would not sooner have attempted to sound a funeral dirge. Though capable of some variety of expression, it had never yet been seduced into emitting any sound in the least indicative of the designs struggling in the mind of the blower. The human was paralyzed before it—a mere machine to blow into it and let come what would. And, now, for the first time in my experience, it took on a jubilant strain. I blew slowly; I blew solemnly. Still, it sounded like nothing else than a glad, exultant rallying-call.

I paused, horrified. From the rear of the moving procession, Aunt Patty, with a yell and a frantic gesture of the hands, entreated me to "keep a blowin'!"

And, as I stood thus on the steps of the deserted school-house and blew, only to hear the wild lamentations of my soul translated into strains of fiendish mirth through the medium of the horn, the Turkey Mogul, arrived on his second visit of examination to the Wallencamp school, seemed to be descending before my eyes, in a vortex of the giddy atmosphere. In fact, he was alighting from his buggy, and a grim, though reassuring smile sat on his features.

"I see! I see!" he nodded his head. "You've given them a good start," he added, succinctly, indicating the direction of the Wallencampers; "humph! yes! they are always up to something!"

He thrust his hands in his pockets, and, maintaining the same sardonic grin, he, too, stood and watched that receding column.

It was an odd combination of circumstances. I had ceased my mad though involuntary jubilate, on the horn, and was slowly aspiring to that equanimity of mind which the exigencies of the case seemed to require, when the Turkey Mogul turned abruptly, and without speaking a word, handed me a soiled and wrinkled little sheet of paper, the contents of which caused my heart, for an instant, to cease beating, and then set it throbbing with a wild joy and exultation.

It was simply a petition—wrought out of whose brain I know not, but most curiously inscribed in Aunt Patty's own hand, and signed by all the Wallencampers, with "CAPTAIN SARTELL," at the head, and "b. lot" at the foot—to the effect that it was their desire that my labors might be longer continued among them.

Only one, who, having made a play-day of life, turns, at last, to attempt some earnest work, and fails, as he believes, utterly, and then catches a glimpse of unexpected light in the darkness, can understand the impulse given me by that dirty little scroll. It was such happiness as I had never felt before. It made me strangely weak.

"You'll stay," said the Turkey Mogul, at length, "another term, or we'll consider this term extended, if you please."

"I'll stay a few more weeks, anyway," I said, and the Turkey Mogul must have marvelled at the childish faith and joy with which I clung to this new-found rock of my salvation; "but I hadn't thought of it before," I added, a little faintly, thinking of home.

"You're tired!" said the Turkey Mogul, almost sympathetically; "and hungry!" he subjoined, quickly, in a different tone.

I knew by this time that the Turkey Mogul's eyes were dangerously prone to have twinkles in the corners of them, yet I believe I met their derisive questioning with a simple seriousness in my own.

"Well, that's right!" he exclaimed. "Stick to 'em! Stick to 'em! I'll be down to conduct another—humph! another examination in a week or two. Good-bye!" and he gave me his hand, and was off almost before the little line of mourners had disappeared over the crest of the hill. Yet I remember that Grandma Bartlett, who had been deterred by the infirmity of age from joining the procession, and had remained at the window, alone, regaled the Wallencampers, on their return, with a choice fancy, in which the Turkey Mogul and I had stood "talkin' and chatterin' on the school-house steps, for an hour or more." Grandma Bartlett, though not actively disposed to work mischief, nor possessed, indeed, of any animate quality, still cherished a few of the dry formulas of scandal, which she applied to any seemingly favorable combination of circumstances. The Wallencampers, at any time, paid but little attention to her words.

And, at the close of this strange day, I sat alone, in my little room in the Ark, and indited a letter to the following effect:—

"Having received gratifying overtures from the people of my charge, I had decided, for reasons which I could not then explain, to remain at Wallencamp until May, to which time I looked forward with the delightful hope of seeing my dear ones once more.

"Meanwhile, I hoped they would not consider it strange, or ungracious of me to say that I should very much prefer not to have Brother Will, or any one else, come to Wallencamp to look after me, as Brother Will and some others had kindly suggested doing. It would seem to imply that I was not capable of taking care of myself, a mania which I trusted no longer held possession of the family brain. Moreover, Wallencamp, though so charming a place, had but few facilities for the accommodation of guests. I should draw on my salary, now, very shortly, and would then remit the sums I had borrowed in mere temporary embarrassment," etc.



CHAPTER XII.

BECKY'S CONFESSION.

The Wallencamp bonfire, like Christmas or a Fourth of July celebration in less ingenious and erratic communities, came only once a year. It was kindled on Eagle Hill, that runs out from the mainland of Wallencamp into Herrin' River,—the Wallencampers called the Hill an island,—and from most points of view it answered to the geographical description of "Land entirely surrounded by water," seeming, indeed, to stand solitary in the river, with an air of infinite repose on its broad, sloping sides; green and gold, so I remember it ever, with the sun setting over it in the spring-time,—green and gold, in a crimson river!

It had an air of sublimity, too, looking over and beyond the cedars to the bay, and down the length of the winding stream that fretted at its feet or lapped them quietly.

There I planned to build a house, in some bright future day, that should be in effective keeping with the natural grandeur of the place,—quaint, lordly, substantial, with the appearance of having fallen somewhat into disuse, ivy growing over the dark stone walls, and moss in the winding drives, and carved lions at the gate.

The hill was a favorite resort of mine, and Rebecca had generally accompanied me on my excursions thither.

Once she said—it was in the days when she had been happier—"I guess this place is just as God made it to begin with."

Rebecca had been struck with and had retained an idea which she had probably heard promulgated sometime at the West Wallen Sunday-school, that, at the time of man's spiritual fall, the earth also, with all terrestrial things, had undergone a general mixing up. Her own idea in regard to Eagle Hill she expressed very modestly, looking off with a childish content and assurance in her eyes. And I was delighted with her.

"You are always thinking such things as that," I exclaimed, enthusiastically. "I know you are!"

Rebecca blushed, smiling, and shook her head.

"I ain't often sure," she said.

I think I told her then that when I had my house on the hill, she should be the housekeeper to guard my keys and conduct my affairs; "that is, my dear, attend to all the little practical details connected with living," and Rebecca, to whom my castles on the Hill were never castles in the air, but who believed most implicitly that I would, sooner or later, perform all things that ever I dreamed of doing, accepted her prospective matronship with a becoming sense of its advantage and dignity.

Eagle Hill was haunted by a horse, a pure white horse—not Lovell's—with a flowing mane and tail, and a beautiful arched neck. His motions, the Wallencampers said, were most fiery and graceful. Occasionally he paused and fell back, quivering on his haunches, looked this way and that, and then, with a wild plunge, swept on again, swifter than before. Every true Wallencamper could both see and hear the "white horse" when, at night, clearly outlined against the sky, he galloped back and forth along the very summit of the hill.

It was on one of the blackest nights of the season that the fuel, which less grand and poetic souls would doubtless have reserved for another winter's use, was borne in jubilant triumph by the Wallencampers up the sides of this sacred and illustrious steep, and there consumed in a most glorious conflagration. The spectacle was appalling. At intervals in the roaring and crackling of the flames was heard the roar of the near ocean, while the familiar features of the landscape and the faces of the encircling spectators, stood out with unreal and terrible distinctness in the hellish light.

Emily, who had coughed all the way climbing up the hill, stood stirring the fire with a long pole, and making reckless and facetious remarks the while, which, uttered in the midst of that unearthly scene, struck me cold with horror.

"Come, Bachelder," said she; "git onto the end of my pole, and I'll hold ye over there a while. Ye might as well be gittin' used to it!"

"Heh! yes," said Bachelor Lot. "But what I'm a thinkin' is, you'd ought to have a subordinate. I never heered—heh!—of putting a person of such importance in the Kingdom—heh!—however efficient—into the position of Fire Tender!"

"Crazy Silvy" was at the bonfire. I had never seen her before. Silvy did not go out on ordinary occasions. I watched her as she stood with a scant, thin shawl thrown over her head, looking intently into the flames, shivering often, and smiling as she moved her lips in apparently delightful conversation with herself.

Some of the children essayed to tease her; she seemed quite unconscious of their efforts, but I turned and spoke to them rather sharply. The next time I looked up, her strange, smiling eyes were fixed full on my face. I glanced away quickly, with a nervous shiver, and moved a little farther off. As I did so, Silvy, regarding me in that same dreamily contemplative manner, walked toward me a step or two, and as I continued to move away, she walked slowly after me.

My acquaintance with the unconfined insane had not been extensive enough to allow me to regard her motions with that mingled amusement and curiosity, which was the only sentiment expressed on the countenances of the Wallencampers who stood watching us; but I concluded that it was better to face about, and meet my pursuer with an air of fearlessness. I did so, and held out my hand to her as she came up.

"How do you do, Silvy?" I said.

"Oh, no!" said Silvy, thrusting her hands behind her, laughing softly, and shaking her head. "Not with the queen of heaven! Not with the queen of heaven!"

I thought I detected Emily's derisive influence in this poor, simple creature's words. Silvy was so perfectly mild and harmless in appearance, however, that I began to feel reassured.

"I've heard about you, Silvy," I continued, cheerfully. "I'm the teacher, you know. You've heard them speak of the teacher?"

"So glad," continued Silvy, in the same low, cooing tone; "so glad to meet the queen of heaven."

"Hush!" said I then. "You mustn't say that again. Draw your shawl up tighter." For in spite of the bonfire, the wind was blowing cold on the hill.

While I spoke Silvy had become absorbed in watching the fire again. I would have walked quietly away, but as I turned to go she thrust her head toward me quickly and whispered:—

"Wait! don't—you—ever—tell!"

Silvy put her hand to her lips.

"No," said I, smiling.

"Silvy never told," she went on; "except to you. You've got a key. Silvy's got a key. She keeps things all locked up, Silvy does. Emily don't have any key. She talks—she talks all over—don't you tell—but Silvy lives with Emily—so bad," said Silvy, heaving a gentle sigh and speaking in a tone of the deepest confidence; "so bad not to have any key."

"That's true, I think," said I, beginning to find my strange companion rather interesting.

"Yes." Silvy nodded her head several times as though we understood, we two, and she was delighted to have discovered the fact.

Then her eyes wandered again to the fire, and she resumed her happy, smiling conversation with herself.

I thought she had forgotten me, or concluded not to unlock anything with her key, when she turned slowly and looked at me, and seemed to gather up the lost train of her ideas in my face.

"Silvy watched the fishermen at Emily's," she went on. "They said, 'Poor Silvy!' 'See you again next time, Silvy!' They are very p'lite, thank you, and they laugh once. 'Ha! ha!' But David Rollin, he laughs twice. 'Ha! ha!' and behind his sleeve, too. Such things are damnable!"

Silvy's dulcet tones ran over that hard word with the mildest and softest of accents.

"And they bring wine," she continued. "Silvy cl'ared off the table one night. She heard 'em sing, and they says to him, 'What about pretty Beck?' and he says 'We must have a little fun, you know, ha! ha!' and then, 'ha! ha!' behind his sleeve. Now if Silvy could keep it all together, you'd straighten it out maybe. Silvy can't straighten it out. Where did she hear so much, I wonder! She hears too much, Silvy does." She knitted her brows in pitiful perplexity.

"You were talking about the fishermen," said I.

"No," said Silvy, shaking her head; "about Beck. She never says, 'Crazy Silvy! There she goes! Look at Silvy!' She says, 'Come and see me, Silvy,' so. So soft spoken. Silvy loves her."

"I love her, too," I said, gently; for Silvy had paused again, and was knitting her brows in that painful manner, as though the effort to think gave her actual physical suffering.

"Silvy knows! Silvy knows!" She exclaimed suddenly, her face all smooth and softly smiling now. "Never—you—trust a neat man," impressively. "Never you trust 'em—for why? They wasn't made so. God made 'em. God made 'em to clutter. And there was that Dave Rollin. He was always a' hangin' things up. He was always foldin' of 'em. He was always a hangin' 'em up in his room. Silvy knows. But there was a piece of writin' got over behind the bury. And it didn't fall. But it stuck. Silvy knows. She reads writin'. She reads it over and over. He didn't love Beck any more. But he's afraid. And he'll give money. 'Oh, go anywhere! Only keep still, Beck. For Heaven's sake, keep still.' Why, she wouldn't hurt him! Beck wouldn't hurt him," said Silvy, in a slow tone full of wonder.

"He needn't be afraid. But Silvy won't tell him so. Why not? Oh, she likes to be amused. Silvy likes to be amused!

"Silvy knows! Silvy knows!" She continued, after another terrible pause. "She set eyes on you, standin' there. That's the one, she says, and she says it a long time. That's the queen of Heaven. She wouldn't hurt Silvy, poor Silvy! She's got a key. So she'll straighten it out maybe. Silvy can't, she's so tired. When Silvy got up in the mornin', it was early. Oh, so still! And a bird was flyin' up—up. Silvy couldn't see—so far to heaven. It made Silvy cry. So strange not to be any tired in the mornin'."

Silvy made a last painful effort to collect her thoughts, before her face resumed its habitual, far away, half smiling expression.

Then she said, "Silvy comes up the hill all alone. Not the way them others, and she see the fire burnin'. But it was dark in the bush. Silvy heard 'em talkin' terribly. It was Beck and George Olver. 'I'll make an honest home for you, Beck.' And she says, terribly, she no deserve. And he says, she better than him, and won't she come? And she cries so, 'My heart is broke!' And how good to live with him she knows, now—so honest and true—but she no fit, and, oh, 'My heart is broke! my heart is broke!'"

The scene, the vividness of these words had not yet faded in the least from Silvy's memory.

"Then," said she; "they keep on talkin', terribly. But Silvy—she hears so much—poor Silvy! She goes 'round very still, 'nother way. Silvy's tired."

And, as unceremoniously as she had approached me, she turned and walked slowly back to her old position before the fire. She did not look at me. She seemed to have become utterly unconscious of my presence. The scant, thin shawl had fallen back from her head. She shivered as she stood gazing into the flames, but the dreamy expression was ever in her eyes and the soft laugh on her lips, as she continued murmuring to herself.

The Wallencampers were not content to let the fire go out after the first grand illumination. They were bringing up more brush from the landward side of the hill, amid a confusion of wild shouts and excited laughter.

I found Rebecca among a group of girls.

"When you go home to-night," I said; "I want you to step in and see me. Come up to my room."

"Yes," said Rebecca, and I noticed how pale she turned in the fire-light. I did not say any more to her, then.

After hearing Silvy's story, I believed that Mr. Rollin had acted a heartless and unmanly part towards Rebecca, made love to her which he could not doubt the poor girl took in earnest, and even promises which he knew he should lightly break sometime, and then, for his own purposes, he begged her to keep silence. I thought I understood, and resolved to instruct Rebecca to forget the red-haired fisherman; to be "sensible," and "marry good, honest George Olver," who loved her so devotedly.

Lute Cradlebow had come home, and was one among the many figures at this brilliant fete. Indeed, the bonfire had been deferred until later than usual in the season, by reason of his absence, and now he was noticeably the lion of the evening, in a brave dark blue cravat that was borne outward by the wind, or fluttered becomingly under his chin, to the envy and despair of all the Wallencamp youth. He exchanged a pleasant greeting with every one, and brought the largest young tree of all up the hill on his broad shoulders.

When, at length, the Wallencampers had permitted the fire to burn low, they joined hands in a ring around the embers, and sang the saddest and sweetest songs in the Hymnal. I sat on a rock near by, engaged as I had been much of the time since my arrival in Wallencamp, in trying to realize the situation—the awful gloom of the night, the river now invisible, below, the sound of the surf farther off, that made my heart sick, and with it the strange mingling of those religious songs, the lonely hill, the smouldering fire, the fantastic group gathered around.

When I got back to the Ark, I found Rebecca waiting for me. She followed me up to my room, and I closed the door.

"You see I waited long enough for you to come of your own accord," I said, laughing. Then I drew a chair in front of her. She sat at the foot of the bed, and I addressed her gravely:—

"Now, Becky, something is the matter. You are not the merry, light-hearted girl you were when I first knew you. And I can help you, perhaps. I will help you. Tell me what the trouble is!"

I thought I should see the tears gathering in Rebecca's eyes, but she looked, instead, so stonily disconsolate, that I was rather dismayed.

"I'm going to tell you," said she; "but you can't help me. They'll all know before long, I guess. I don't care. You talk good, but you don't say much about God. I guess you don't believe there is none. I don't, I can't understand. I'm like I'd got lost, somehow, and when they found me, they'd stone me—I don't care. I've felt enough. I don't feel no more. I've cried so much, I guess I can't cry no more. If I could it 'ud be now, tellin' you.

"When Miss Waite came here to teach, I hadn't ever had no friend except the girls here, and they wasn't bad, but we was always runnin' wild around in the lots, and down to shore, and always laughin' and plaguin' the teacher in school. And when Miss Waite came, she wasn't like you, nor she didn't have such clothes, nor such ways as yours. I didn't love her very much, but she used to talk to me, and wanted me to be a Christian. And she didn't tell me all it was to be a Christian like you have, or I wouldn't 'a' been such a fool to think I could be; but she talked like it wasn't anything to understand, only to want Christ in your heart, and try to be good, and, first, I didn't pretend to mind much what she said, and used to tell the girls, and they'd tell me, too, and we'd laugh. Only one time, she was talkin' to me, and it seemed as though I couldn't hold out no longer, and I cried and cried, and when I got up I felt happy. Just as though He was there. Seemed as though He was all around everywhere, and goin' down the lane, there was a whip-poor-will singin', and it sounded like it never had before—so strange and happy—and I always loved 'em after that—but I never shall again.

"And I tried to be good, and quieter, and have the other girls and the children at home; and when father was drunk and noisy, and some of the folks laughed, I wouldn't give up—quite. Oh, I didn't feel like I was bad then! I didn't! You might remember that. I hadn't much manners, but I never thought anything bad. Some time you might remember that.

"Then Mr. Rollin came, and he might 'a' killed me, and it 'ud been a kindness; but he hadn't no such kind heart as that. He used to make excuses for meetin' me. He wouldn't look at any of the other girls. He said he couldn't see no beauty in anybody else. He said I was the only one on earth he loved. He said he wouldn't care what became of him if I wasn't good to him.

"I thought George never talked to me so much as that, and I trusted him every word. It was all so different. I thought I loved him, too. He talked about how he should take me to Providence, and I said I hadn't much manners or education, and they'd laugh at me. He said there wasn't another such a face there, and if he was suited, they might laugh. And he used to talk about how I'd look all dressed up in his house, down there—and I don't see! I don't see! I trusted every word.

"It wouldn't have been no different, anyway. I loved you when you came. When he went with you, I tried to hate you. I hated him, but I never hated you! In my heart, teacher, I never hated you. You might think of that, some time——"

"Well, my dear little girl," I interrupted her; "it seems we have both been deceived in the fisherman, but, doubtless, we shall recover in time. You don't like him, neither do I. We'll dismiss the subject from our minds, forever. There's a good, honest boy here in Wallencamp that a girl I know ought to busy her head about. Why trouble ourselves with disagreeable things?"

"You might think, some time," Rebecca went on, with the same hopeless expression, and in the same tense voice; "I never knew that about not trustin' anybody till you told me. I hadn't never be'n away from here. I wasn't brought up like you, and I wasn't so strong as you—you might think, some time—but not now. I don't ask to have you now—you don't see. I knew you wouldn't—you can forget—you're so happy—think of that, sometime, how happy you was, sittin' there—but I never can forget any more. I say it 'ud be'n better if I'd a died. It's the sin and the shame. I've nothin' but to bear 'em, now, as long as I live. Oh, you might think what it was not to have no hope anywheres!"

"What do you mean?" I cried, as it rushed over me in that instant what I had been too heedless and slow to comprehend, the possible wretched meaning of her words. "What do you mean?" rising and standing over her, with a terrible sense of power to convict.

"Oh, Becky, you didn't mean that—worst?"

"Yes," said she, with no visible change on her poor, set face—"yes—I do."

"I wish you would go out of my room, and leave me!" I exclaimed, then; "I am not used to such people as you! Do you suppose I would have been with you all these weeks if I had known? Don't you see how you have wronged me? I never want to see you again, never! Go! go! and leave me alone!"

I shall never forget the look with which Rebecca rose wearily, and went to the door—not an angry look, not a look of terror nor even of pleading reproach; but it was as if her soul, sinful, crushed and bleeding though it was, in that one moment, rose above my soul and condemned it with sorrowful, clear eyes.

I listened to her step going down the stairs. I did not call her back. I heard her latch the outer door of the Ark. No thought of pity for her wrong, or commiseration for her desolation moved me. I thought only in my proud selfish passion, how miserably, how bitterly I had been deceived.

I sought out the fisherman's letter before retiring, and the one I had begun in answer, and tore them both into shreds, believing that I should as easily rid my mind of the whole miserable affair with which I had been unwittingly complicated.



CHAPTER XIII.

A MILD WINTER ON THE CAPE.

"It's be'n a mild winter on the Cape;" the Wallencampers congratulated one another, blinking, with a delicious sense of warmth and comfort, in the rays of a strong March sun.

The Wallencampers were not, perhaps, generally incited by that love of stern, unceasing, and vigorous exertion which is, geographically considered, one of the chief characteristics of our hardy northern races. True poets and idealists, they were lazy, and they had but few clothes, both excellent reasons for inclining kindly to the warm weather.

And yet, notwithstanding this, they had grown used to a wild ruggedness of nature and condition, a terrible, sublime uncertainty about life and things in general when the wind blew, missing which, in this earthly state, they would have pined most sadly. And I do not believe that they would have exchanged their rugged, storm-swept, wind-beleaguered little section of Cape Cod for a realm in sunny Italy itself; no, not even if the waves of that bright clime had rippled over sands of literal gold, and their winter had been nine months in the year instead of the customary six and a half.

"A mild winter on the Cape." Grandpa Keeler often repeated the words; and sitting by the fire at night, his eyes grew big and wild, and his tones took on a terrible impressiveness as he told of rough winters on the Cape, when the snow lay drifted high across the fences in the lane, and "every time she came in yender"—pointing in the direction of the Bay—"she licked offa slice or two o' bank, and the old Ark whirled and shuk—O Lordy, teacher!—as ef she'd slipped her moorin's and gone off on a high sea, and ef you'd a heered the wind a screechin' inter them winders, you'd a thought the"——

"Bijonah Keeler!" Grandma Keeler spoke. She said no more. It was enough.

"You'd a thought something had got loose, sure," concluded Grandpa, with a keen glance aside to me that revealed, as with tenfold significance, the obstructed force of his narrative.

In the daytime, Grandpa was now much out of doors. He had most frequent and loving recourse to an interesting looking pile of rubbish at the south end of the barn. There he sat, and napped and nodded, and employed the brief interims of wakefulness in whittling bean poles, preparatory for another year's supply of that dreaded and inexorable crop. Earth's disturbing voices, Grandma Keeler herself, seldom reached him there.

Early, too, I saw him in the garden, leaning pensively on his hoe—a becalmed and striking figure in a ragged snuff-colored coat, and a hat marked by numerous small orifices, through which, here and there, strands from his silvery fringe of hair strayed and waved in the breezes.

It was Grandma and Grandpa Keeler's custom at the first approach of spring to detach themselves from Madeline's household, and to form a separate and complete establishment of their own in the sunny kitchen, away out at the end of the Ark. I was still, nominally, Madeline's boarder, and sat at the table with her and the little Keelers; but the impulses of my heart were ever guiding my feet to that other dear resort, where doors and hearts seemed always open to receive me, and an inexpressible warmth and light and comfort pervaded the atmosphere.

It was early in March, when, returning from school one day at the noontide intermission, I found Grandma standing without the Ark, singularly occupied. The sun was shining on her uncovered head, and the tranquil glow on her face was clearly the exponent of no fictitious happiness. In her apron she had a quantity of empty egg-shells, so carefully drained of their contents as to present an almost perfect external appearance, and these she was arranging on the twigs of a large bush that grew just outside the window.

I was glad, afterwards, that I intruded then no skeptical questions as to her purpose, for, as I stood and looked at her, her action gradually lost for me the tinge of eccentricity, with which it had at first seemed imbued. I realized that there was something grander than reason, more exalted than philosophy.

"I suppose you've heerd about egg-plants, teacher;" said she, at length, turning to me, while the sun in her face broke up into scintillant beams that penetrated my being, and quickened my very soul. "This 'ere old bush ain't bore nothin' for years, and it looked so bare and sorrerful, somehow, standin' out here all alone, and everything else a kinder wakin' up in the spring, I thought I'd try to sorter liven it up a little;" and she resumed her placid occupation.

"Blessed Grandma," I could only murmur, as I turned to enter the Ark; "inspired, delightful soul!"

It was in March that the Wallencamp sun-bonnets came forth, all in a single day, a curious and startling pageant. The Modoc, who had gone bareheaded through the winter, assumed hers as a turban of impressive altitude, while the diminutive Carietta and the infant Sophronia appeared but as vagrant telescopes on insufficient pegs.

In March the "pipers" lifted up their homesick notes at nightfall, in the meadows. On the last day of that month, I found arbutus in bloom under the leaves in the cedar woods.

Scarcely had the first faint signs of herbage appeared on the earth ere the Wallencamp cows and horses were given over exclusively to the guardianship of nature, and to wander whithersoever they would, for the Wallencamp fences had ceased to present themselves as obstacles in the way. Indeed, some portions of them had been utterly obliterated, and this was easily traced to a habit prevalent among the Wallencampers of resorting to them for fuel when, on some winter night, other resources were found to be low.

Other portions of them were decayed, or blown over in the wind, so that there was just enough left to sit on for private soliloquy, or social debate, and to give a picturesque charm to the landscape; yet, it was a fact which I found worthy of notice, that, in going from one place to another, no true Wallencamper ever walked over a broken-down part of the fence, or went through a gap in the fence; he always selected an upright part of the fence to climb over, even going a little out of the way, if necessary, to effect this purpose.

The Wallencampers were staunch on the matter of individual rights; they turned each his own horse and cow into his own door-yard. Animated, doubtless, by something of the same principle, those attenuated animals, having made an impartial detour of the premises, congregated, as of one accord, along the highway, especially in that part of the lane between the Ark and the school-house.

I made my way through these new perils from day to day, in safety, until the deepening green of the hills and fields called the herd away to wider pastures.

Dr. Aberdeen, however, remained behind. Dr. Aberdeen, as he was termed by the Wallencampers, was a horse of peculiar and distinguished parts. Among his other eccentric gifts, he had a harmless habit of chasing beings of a superior race. In what manner this propensity had first manifested itself, I do not know, but it had been eagerly seized upon as ground for further development by the juvenile element of Wallencamp, and especially by the Modoc, under whose lively tuition the animal had reached an almost strategic ability in the art.

Dr. Aberdeen was truly of the mildest disposition imaginable. He had never been known to kick. He had never even been known to open his mouth and snap at a fly, but the expression of his countenance, if it might be so called, when he was on the chase, was vicious and determined in the extreme, and by no means betrayed the purely facetious nature of his intentions. During school hours he seldom wandered from the immediate vicinity of the school-house, where he appeared to be waiting for the children to come out to play. Often have I looked up to see him gazing in at the windows with a gleam of evil expectancy in his melancholy dun brown eye.

With the joyful advent of the spring came, also, Tommy's tame owl and "Happy Moses." Tommy's owl emerged from his winter-quarters, and took up his daily post of observation on the fence on the shady side of the school-house. He was blind in one eye, which eye was always open, the other was always closed. Yet with that one glassy, unblinking orb, Tommy's owl seemed to me, as I lifted my eyes to the window, to be reviewing the past with an indifference as calm and all-embracing as that with which he sent his inexorable gaze into the future; and to take in me and the passing events of the school-room as a mere speck in his kaleidoscopic vision of the ages.

What was the winter's thraldom from which Happy Moses had escaped, I never learned. He was a broad-shouldered fellow, six feet in height, with a beard like flax, and a sunny, ingenuous countenance. What term should have been applied to his eccentricities in politer circles I cannot say, but in Wallencamp, he was artlessly designated as "the fool." Whether it was on this account, that with a certain rashness of perception peculiar to the Wallencampers, they always prefixed the adjective "happy" to his name, or merely on account of the transparent sunniness of his disposition, I cannot say, either.

Happy Moses played with the children. He regarded me, as one of the class of those who presume to teach, with mingled scorn and aversion. When I went to the door to blow the children in from their play, he invariably turned his back upon me, cocked his hat on one side of his head, and walked away with an air that was palpably reckless, defiant, and jaunty.

When he reappeared, it was usually with his knitting-work, to which he devoted himself in a desultory way, reclining on the school-house steps. But sometimes he sat on the fence with the owl, and then it was noticeable that while the gaze of the one was transient and silly, the gaze of the other seemed to grow the more unutterably searching and profound. So, at last, the new term was fairly established with these three—Dr. Aberdeen, Happy Moses, and the owl.

Hulled corn and beans had now become but as a dream of the past in Wallencamp, and for a brief season before the accession of lobsters, life was mainly supported on winter-green-berries, or box-berries, as they were called. These grew in large quantities at "Black Ground," a section of the woods which had been burned over. Daily I met happy groups of Wallencampers, with baskets and pails in their hands, going "boxberry plummin.'"

We had boxberry bread, boxberry stews and pies, and one day, I caught a glimpse of Grandma, in her part of the Ark, frying boxberry griddle-cakes.

Grandpa, when I met him, at this time, wore an air of deep dejection; yet he bore his woes in silence, doubtless avoiding any concession that should suggest the need of another clarification of his system. Once, when nobody was looking, he cautiously withdrew a handful of scraped birch bark from his pocket and gave it to me, remarking that he thought it was "a little more bracin' than them tarnal woodsy plums."

Next in the order of events, as the Modoc stood in her place in the reading-class and slowly enunciated each separate syllable of the lesson in a tone as remarkable for a loud distinctness as it was for a total lack of meaning and modulation, from that side of her dress which had been sagging most heavily, something fell with a crash to the floor. It was a boiled lobster of anomalous proportions. The pocket had given way at last under its overpowering burden, and now appeared ignominiously upborne on the claws of its former prisoner. The Modoc seized the crustacean with glittering defiance in her eyes, and at recess, I saw that turbaned Amazon devouring it, with a group of wistful and admiring faces gathered round. The boys were out in the bay "setting pots" and "trolling for bait." Soon, not a child at Wallencamp was lobsterless. I discovered two under the infant Sophronia's desk one morning, and afterwards kept a sharp eye in that direction. Sophronia's conduct throughout the session was in an unusual degree exemplary. I detected no guilty blush on her countenance, I heard not the crackling of a claw, but when she went out, I observed that she took no lobsters with her.