She did not answer.

"You do not know everything about him, neither."

"What don't I know?"

"Almost all. You cannot, till you begin to obey him; for till then he will not shew himself to you. The epitome of all beauty is in those two words — Jesus Christ."

She made no answer yet, with her head bowed, and striving to check the straining sobs with which her breast was heaving. She had a feeling that he was looking on compassionately; but it was a good while before she could restrain herself into calmness; and during that time he added nothing more. When she could look up, she found he was not looking at her; his eyes were turned upon the river, where the moon made a broad and broadening streak of wavy brightness. But Elizabeth looked at the quiet of his brow, and it smote her; though there was now somewhat of thoughtful care upon the face. The tears that she thought she had driven back, rushed fresh to her eyes again.

"Do you believe what I last said, Miss Elizabeth?" he said turning round to her.

"About the epitome of all beauty?"

"Yes. Do you believe it?"

"You say so — I don't understand it," she said sadly and somewhat perplexed.

"I told you so," he answered, looking round to the moonlight again.

"But Mr. Landholm," said Elizabeth in evident distress, "won't you tell me something more?"

"I cannot."

"Oh yes you can, — a great deal more," she said weeping.

"I could," he said gravely, — "yet I should tell you nothing — you would not understand me. You must, find it out for yourself."

"How in the world can I?"

"There is a promise, — 'If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine.'"

"I don't know how to begin, nor anything about it," said Elizabeth, weeping still.

"Begin anywhere."

"How? What do you mean?"

"Open the Bible at the first chapter of Matthew, and read. Ask honestly, of your own conscience and of God, at each step, what obligation upon you grows out of what you are reading. If you follow his leading he will lead you on, — to himself."

Elizabeth sobbed in silence for some little time; then she said,

"I will do it, Mr. Landholm."

"If you do," said he, "you will find you can do nothing."

"Nothing!" said Elizabeth.

"You will find you are dependent upon the good pleasure of God for power to take the smallest step."

"His good pleasure! — Suppose it should not be given me."

"There is no 'suppose' about that," Winthrop answered, with a slight smile, which seen as it was through a veil of tears, Elizabeth never forgot, and to which she often looked back in after time; — "'Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.' But he does not always get a draught at the first asking. The water of life was not bought so cheap as that. However, 'to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.'"

Elizabeth hearkened to him, with a curious mixture of yielding and rebellion at once in her mind. She felt them both there. But the rebellion was against the words; her yielding was for the voice that brought the words to her ear. She paused awhile.

"At that rate, people might be discouraged before they got what they wanted," she observed, when the silence had lasted some little time.

"They might," said Winthrop quietly.

"I should think many might."

"Many have been," he answered.

"What then?" she asked a little abruptly.

"They did not get what they wanted."

Elizabeth started a little, and shivered, and tears began to come again.

"What's to hinder their being discouraged, Mr. Landholm?" she asked in a tone that was a little querulous.

"Believing God's word."

So sweet the words came, her tears ceased at that; the power of the truth sank for a moment with calming effect upon her rebellious feeling; but with this came also as truly the thought, "You have a marvellous beautiful way of saying things quietly!" — However for the time her objections were silenced; and she sat still, looking out upon the water, and thinking that with the first quiet opportunity she would begin the first chapter of Matthew.

For a little while they both were motionless and silent; and then rising, Winthrop began his walk up and down the deck again. Elizabeth was left to her meditations; which sometimes roved hither and thither, and sometimes concentred themselves upon the beat of his feet, which indeed formed a sort of background of cadence to them all. It was such a soothing reminder of one strong and sure stay that she might for the present lean upon; and the knowledge that she might soon lose it, made the reminder only the more precious. She was weeping most bitter tears during some of that time; but those footsteps behind her were like quiet music through all. She listened to them sometimes, and felt them always, with a secret gratification of knowing they would not quit the deck till she did. Then she had some qualms about his getting tired; and then she said to herself that she could not put a stop to what was so much to her and which she was not to have again. So she sat and listened to them, weary and half bewildered with the changes and pain of the last few days and hours; hardly recognizing the reality of her own situation, or that the sloop, Winthrop's walk behind her, the moonlight, her lonely seat on the deck, and her truly lonely place in the world, were not all parts of a curious phantasm. Or if realizing them, with senses so tried and blunted with recent wear and tear, that they refused to act and left her to realize it quietly and almost it seemed stupidly. She called it so to herself, but she could not help it; and she was in a manner thankful for that. She would wake up again. She would have liked to sit there all night under that moonlight and with the regular fall of Winthrop's step to and fro on the vessel.

"How long can you stand this?" said he, pausing beside her.

"What?" said Elizabeth looking up.

"How long can you do without resting?"

"I am resting. — I couldn't rest so well anywhere else."

"Couldn't you?"

"No! —" she said earnestly.

He turned away and went on walking. Elizabeth blessed him for it.

The moon shone, and the wind blew, and steadily the vessel sailed on; till higher grounds began to rise on either side of her, and hills stood back of hills, ambitious of each other's standing, and threw their deep shadows all along the margin of the river. As the sloop entered between these narrowing and lifting walls of the river channel, the draught of air became gentler, often hindered by some outstanding high point she had left behind; more slowly she made her way past hill and hill- embayed curves of the river, less stoutly her sails were filled, more gently her prow rippled over the smoother water. Sometimes she passed within the shadow of a lofty hill-side; and then slipped out again into the clear fair sparkling water where the moon shone.

"Are we near there?" said Elizabeth suddenly, turning her head to arrest her walking companion. He came to the back of the chair.

"Near Wut-a-qut-o?"

"Yes."

"No. Nearing it, but not near it yet."

"How soon shall we be?"

"If the wind holds, I should think in two hours."

"Where do we stop?"

"At the sloop's quarters — the old mill —about two miles down the river from Shahweetah."

"Why wouldn't she carry us straight up to the place?"

"It would be inconvenient landing there, and would very much delay the sloop's getting to her moorings."

"I'll pay for that! —"

"We can get home as well in another way."

"But then we shall have to stay here all night."

"Here, on the sloop, you mean? The night is far gone already."

"Not half!" said Elizabeth. "It's only a little past twelve."

"Aren't you tired?"

"I suppose so, but I don't feel it."

"Don't you want to take some sleep before morning?"

"No, I can't. But you needn't walk there to take care of me, Mr. Winthrop. I shall be quite safe alone."

"No, you will not," he said; and going to some of the sloop's receptacles, he drew out an old sail and laying it on the deck by her side he placed himself upon it, in a half sitting, half reclining posture, which told of some need of rest on his part.

"You are tired," she said earnestly. "Please don't stay here for me!"

"It pleases me to stay," he said lightly. "It is no hardship, under ordinary circumstances, to pass such a night as this out of doors."

"What is it in these circumstances?" said Elizabeth quickly.

"Not a hardship."

"You don't say much more than you are obliged to," thought Elizabeth bitterly. "It is 'not a hardship' to stay there to take care of me; — and there is not in the world another person left to me who could say even as much." —

"There is a silent peace-speaking in such a scene as this," presently said Winthrop, lying on his sail and looking at the river.

"I dare say there is," Elizabeth answered sadly.

"You cannot feel it, perhaps?"

"Not a particle. I can just see that it might be."

"The Bible makes such constant use of natural imagery, that to one familiar with it, the objects of nature bring back as constantly its teachings — its warnings — its consolations."

"What now?" said Elizabeth.

"Many things. Look at those deep and overlapping shadows. 'As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people, from henceforth'" —

"Stop, Mr. Winthrop!" Elizabeth exclaimed; — "Stop! I can't bear it."

"Why?"

"I can't bear it," she repeated, in a passion of tears.

"Why?" said he again in the same tone, when a minute had gone by.

"Those words don't belong to me — I've nothing to do with them," she said, raising her head and dashing her tears right and left.

But Winthrop made no sort of answer to that, and a dead silence fell between the parties. Again the prow of the sloop was heard rippling against the waves; and slowly she glided past mountain and shadow, and other hills rose and other deep shadows lay before them. Elizabeth, between other thoughts, was tempted to think that her companion was as impassive and cold as the moonlight, and as moveless as the dark mountain lines that stood against the sky. And yet she knew and trusted him better than that. It was but the working of passing impatience and bitter feeling; it was only the chafing of passion against what seemed so self-contained and so calm. And yet that very self-continence and calmness was what passion liked, and what passion involuntarily bent down before.

She had not got over yet the stunned effect of the past days and nights. She sat feeling coldly miserable and forlorn and solitary; conscious that one interest was living at her heart yet, but also conscious that it was to live and die by its own strength as it might; and that in all the world she had nothing else; no, nor never should have anything else. She could not have a father again; and even he had been nothing for the companionship of such a spirit as hers, not what she wanted to make her either good or happy. But little as he had done of late to make her either, the name, and even the nominal guardianship, and what the old childish affection had clung to, were gone — and never could come back; and Elizabeth wept sometimes with a very bowed head and heart, and sometimes sat stiff and quiet, gazing at the varying mountain outline, and the fathomless shadows that repeated it upon the water.

The night drew on, as the hills closed in more and more upon the narrowing river channel, and the mountain heads lifted themselves more high, and the shadows spread out broader upon the river. Every light along shore had long been out; but now one glimmered down at them faintly from under a high thick wooded bluff, on the east shore; and the Julia Ann as she came up towards it, edged down a little constantly to that side of the river.

"Where are we going?" said Elizabeth presently. "We're getting out of the channel."

But she saw immediately that Winthrop was asleep. It made her feel more utterly alone and forlorn than she had done before. With a sort of additional chill at her heart, she looked round for some one else of whom to ask her question, and saw the skipper just come on deck. Elizabeth got up to speak to him.

"Aren't we getting out of our course?"

"Eg-zackly," said Mr. Hildebrand. "Most out of it. That light's the Mill, marm."

"The Mill! Cowslip's Mill?"

"Well, it's called along o' my father, 'cause he's lived there, I s'pose, — and made it, — and owns to it, too, as far as that goes; — I s'pose it's as good a right to have his name as any one's."

Elizabeth sat down and looked at the light, which now had a particularly cheerless and hopeless look for her. It was the token of somebody's home, shining upon one who had none; it was a signal of the near ending of a guardianship and society which for the moment had taken home's place; a reminder that presently she must be thrown upon her own guidance; left to take care of herself alone in the world, as best she might. The journey, with all its pain, had been a sort of little set- off from the rest of her life, where the contrasts of the past and the future did not meet. They were coming back now. She felt their shadows lying cold upon her. It was one of the times in her life of greatest desolation, the while the sloop was drawing down to her berth under the home light, and making fast in her moorings. The moon was riding high, and dimly shewed Elizabeth the but half-remembered points and outlines; — and there was a contrast! She did not cry; she looked, with a cold chilled feeling of eye and mind that would have been almost despair, if it had not been for the one friend asleep at her side. And he was nothing to her. Nothing. He was nothing to her. Elizabeth said it to herself; but for all that he was there, and it was a comfort to see him there.

The sails rattled down to the deck; and with wind and headway the sloop gently swung up to her appointed place. Another light came out of the house, in a lantern; and another hand on shore aided the sloop's crew in making her fast.

"How can he sleep through it all!" thought Elizabeth. "I wonder if anything ever could shake him out of his settled composure — asleep or awake, it's all the same."

"Ain't you goin' ashore?" said the skipper at her side.

"No — not now."

"They'll slick up a better place for you than we could fix up in this here little hulk. Though she ain't a small sloop neither, by no means."

"What have you got aboard there, Hild'?" called out a voice that came from somewhere in the neighbourhood of the lantern. "Gals?"

"Governor Landholm and some company," said the skipper in a more moderate tone. The other voice took no hint of moderation.

"Governor Landholm? — is he along? Well — glad to see him. Run from the yallow fever, eh?"

"Is mother up, father?"

"Up? — no! — What on arth!"

"Tell her to get up, and make some beds for folks that couldn't sleep aboard sloop; and have been navigatin' all night."

"Go, and I'll look after the sloop till morning, Captain," said Winthrop sitting up on his sail.

"Won't you come ashore and be comfortable?" said father and son at once.

"I am comfortable."

"But you'll be better off there, Governor."

"Don't think I could, Hild'. I'm bound to stay by the ship."

"Won't you come, Miss?" said the skipper addressing Elizabeth. "You'll be better ashore."

"Oh yes — come along — all of you," said the old sloop-master on the land.

"I'm in charge of the passengers, Captain," said Winthrop; "and I don't think it is safe for any of them to go off before morning."

The request was urged to Elizabeth. But Winthrop quietly negatived it every time it was made; and the sloop's masters at last withdrew. Elizabeth had not spoken at all.

"How do you do?" said Winthrop gravely, when the Cowslips, father and son, had turned their backs upon the vessel.

"Thank you —" said Elizabeth, — and stopped there.

"You are worn out."

"No," — Elizabeth answered under her breath; and then gathering it, went on, — "I am afraid you are."

"I am perfectly well," he said. "But you ought to rest."

"I will, — by and by," said Elizabeth desperately. "I will stay here till the daylight comes. It will not be long, will it?"

He made no answer. The sloop's deck was in parts blockaded with a load of shingles. Winthrop went to these, and taking down bundle after bundle, disposed them so as to make a resting-place of greater capabilities than the armless wooden chair in which Elizabeth had been sitting all night. Over this, seat, back, sides and all, he spread the sail on which he had been lying.

"Is there nothing in the shape of a pillow or cushion that you could get out of the cabin now?" said he.

"But you have given me your sail," said Elizabeth.

"I'm master of the sloop now. Can't you get a pillow?"

Since so much had been done for her, Elizabeth consented to do this for herself. She fetched a pillow from the cabin; and Winthrop himself bestowed it in the proper position; and with a choking feeling of gratitude and pleasure that did not permit her to utter one word, Elizabeth placed herself in the box seat made for her, took off her bonnet and laid her head down. She knew that Winthrop laid her light shawl over her head; but she did not stir. Her thanks reached only her pillow, in the shape of two or three hot tears; then she slept.

CHAPTER X.

Beneath my palm-trees, by the river side, I sat a weeping; in the whole world wide There was no one to ask me why I wept, — And so I kept Brimming the water-lily cups with tears Cold as my fears. SHELLEY.

The dawn had fairly broken, but that was all, when Winthrop and old Mr. Cowslip met on the little wharf landing which served instead of courtyard to the house. The hands clasped each other cordially.

"How do you do? Glad to see you in these parts!" was the hearty salutation of the old man to the young.

"Thank you, Mr. Cowslip," said Winthrop, returning the grasp of the hand.

"I don't see but you keep your own," the old man went on, looking at him wistfully. "Why don't you come up our way oftener? It wouldn't hurt you."

"I don't know about that," said Winthrop. "My business lies that way, you know."

"Ah! — 'tain't as good business as our'n, now," said Mr. Cowslip. "You'd better by half be up there on the old place, with your wife and half a dozen children about you. Ain't married yet, Governor, be you?"

"No sir."

"Goin' to be?"

"I don't know what I am going to be, sir."

"Ah! —" said the old miller with a sly smile. "Is that what you've got here in the sloop with you now? I guessed it, and Hild' said it wa'n't — not as he knowed on — but I told him he didn't know everything."

"Hild' is quite right. But there are two ladies here who are going up to Shahweetah. Can you give us a boat, Mr. Cowslip?"

"A boat? — How many of you?"

"Four — and baggage. Your boat is large enough — used to be when I went in her."

"Used to be when I went in her," said the old skipper; "but there it is! She won't hold nobody now."

"What's the matter?"

"She took too many passengers the other day, — that is, she took one too many. Shipped a cargo of fresh meat, sir, and it wa'n't stowed in right, and the 'Bessie Bell' broke her heart about it. Like to ha' gone to the bottom."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, I was comin' home from Diver's Rock the other day — just a week ago last Saturday — I had been round there up the shore after fish; — you know the rock where the horse mackerel comes? — me and little Archie; lucky enough we had no more along. By the by, I hope you'll go fishing, Winthrop — the mackerel's fine this year. How long you're goin' to stay?"

"Only a day or two, sir."

"Ah! — Well — we were comin' home with a good mess o' fine fish, and when we were just about in the middle of the river, comin' over, — the fish had been jumping all along the afternoon, shewing their heads and tails more than common; and I'd been sayin' to Archie it was a sign o' rain — 'tis, you know, — and just as we were in the deepest of the river, about half way over, one of 'em came up and put himself aboard of us."

"A sturgeon?"

"Just that, sir; as sound a fellow as ever you saw in your life — just the length of one of my little oars — longer than I be — eight feet wanting one inch, he measured, for the blade of that oar has been broken off a bit — several inches, — and what do you think he weighed? — Two hundred and forty pound."

"So it seems you got him safe to land, where you could weigh him."

"And measure him. I forgot I was talkin' to a lawyer," said the old man laughing. "Yes, I didn't think much how long he was at the time, I guess! He came in as handsome as ever you saw anything done — just slipped himself over the gunwale so — and duv under one of the th'arts, and druv his nose through the bottom of the boat."

"Kept it there, I hope?"

"Ha, ha! Not so fast but there came in a'most water enough to float him again by the time we got to land. He was a power of a fellow!"

"And the 'Bessie' don't float?"

"No; she's laid up with three broken ribs."

"No other boat on hand?"

"There's a little punt out there, that Hild' goes a fishin' in — that'd carry two or three people. But it wouldn't take the hull on ye."

"There's the sloop's boat."

"She leaks," said the miller. "She wants to be laid up as bad as the 'Bessie.'"

"Have you any sort of a team, Mr. Cowslip?"

"Yes! — there's my little wagon — it'll hold two. But you ain't wanting it yet, be you?"

"As soon as it can go — if it can go. Is there a horse to the wagon?"

"Sartain! But won't you stop and take a bit?"

"No sir. If you will let some of the boys take up the punt with her load, I'll drive the wagon myself, and as soon as you can let me have it."

"Jock! — tackle up the wagon! —that 'ere little red one in the barn," shouted the miller. "Hild' 'll see to the boat-load — or I will, — and send it right along. I'm sorry you won't stop."

Winthrop turned back to the sloop. Elizabeth met him there with the question, "if she might not go now?"

"As soon as you please. I am going to drive you up to Shahweetah. The boat will carry the rest, but it is too small to take all of us."

"I'm very glad!" — Elizabeth could not help saying.

She granted half a word of explanation to Mrs. Nettley, her bonnet was hastily thrown on, and she stood with Winthrop on the wharf before the little wagon was fairly ready. But Jock was not tardy neither; and a very few minutes saw them seated and the horse's head turned from the Mill.

The dawn was fresh and fair yet, hardly yielding to day. In utter silence they drove swiftly along the road, through the woods and out upon the crest of tableland overlooking the bay; just above the shore where the huckleberry party had coasted along, that afternoon years before. By the time they got there, the day had begun to assert itself. Little clouds over Wut-a-qut-o's head were flushing into loveliness, and casting down rosy tints on the water; the mountain slopes were growing bright, and a soft warm colouring flung through all the air from the coming rays of the coming sun. The cat-birds were wide awake and very busy; the song sparrows full of gladness; and now and then, further off, a wood-thrush, less worldly than the one and less unchastened than the other, told of hidden and higher sweets, in tones further removed from Earth than his companions knew. The wild, pure, ethereal notes thrilled like a voice from some clear region where earthly defilement had been overcome, and earthly sorrows had lost their power. Between whiles, the little song sparrows strained their throats with rejoicing; but that was the joy of hilarious nature that sorrows and defilement had never touched. The cat-birds spoke of business, and sung over it, ambitious and self-gratulatory, and proud. And then by turns came the strange thrush's note, saying, as if they knew it and had proved it,

"WHEN HE GIVETH QUIETNESS, THEN WHO CAN MAKE TROUBLE?"

The travellers had ridden so far without speaking a word. If Elizabeth was sometimes weeping, she kept herself very quiet, and perfectly still. The sights and sounds that were abroad entered her mind by a side door, if they entered at all. Winthrop might have taken the benefit of them; but up to the bend of the bay he had driven fast and attentively. Here he suffered the horse to slacken his pace and come even to a walk, while his eye took note of the flushing morning, and perhaps the song of the birds reached his ear. It was not of them he spoke.

"Do you mean to begin upon the first chapter of Matthew?" he said, when the horse had walked the length of some two or three minutes.

"Yes! — I do" — said Elizabeth, turning her face towards him.

"According to the rules?"

The answer was spoken more hesitatingly, but again it was 'yes.'

"I am glad of that," he said.

"Mr. Winthrop," said Elizabeth presently, speaking it seemed with some effort, — "if I get into any difficulty — if I cannot understand, — I mean, if I am in any real trouble, — may I write to you to ask about it?"

"With great pleasure. I mean, it would give me great pleasure to have you do so."

"I should be very much obliged to you," she said humbly.

She did not see, for she did not look to see, a tiny show of a smile which spread itself over her companion's face. They drove on fast, till the bottom of the bay was left and they descended from the tableland, by Sam Doolittle's, to the road which skirted the south side of Shahweetah. Winthrop looked keenly as he passed at the old fields and hillsides. They were uncultivated now; fallow lands and unmown grass pastures held the place of the waving harvests of grain and new-reaped stubblefields that used to be there in the old time. The pastures grew rank, for there were even no cattle to feed them; and the fallows were grown with thistles and weeds. But over what might have been desolate lay the soft warmth of the summer morning; and rank pasture and uncared fallow ground took varied rich and bright hues under the early sun's rays. Those rays had now waked the hilltops and sky and river, and were just tipping the woods and slopes of the lower ground. By the bend meadow Winthrop drew in his horse again and looked fixedly.

"Does it seem pleasant to you?" he asked.

"How should it, Mr. Winthrop?" Elizabeth said coldly.

"Do you change your mind about wishing to be here?"

"No, not at all. I might as well be here as anywhere. I would rather — I have nowhere else to go."

He made no comment, but drove on fast again, till he drew up once more at the old back door of the old house. It seemed a part of the solitude, for nothing was stirring. Elizabeth sat and watched Winthrop tie the horse; then he came and helped her out of the wagon.

"Lean on me," said he. "You are trembling all over."

He put her arm within his, and led her up to the door and knocked.

"Karen is up — unless she has forgotten her old ways," said Winthrop. He knocked again.

A minute after, the door slowly opened its upper half, and Karen's wrinkled face and white cap and red shortgown were before them. Winthrop did not speak. Karen looked in bewilderment; then her bewilderment changed into joy.

"Mr. Winthrop! — Governor!" —

And her hand was stretched out, and clasped his in a long mute stringent clasp, which her eyes at least said was all she could do.

"How do you do, Karen?"

"I'm well — the Lord has kept me. But you —"

"I am well," said Winthrop. "Will you let us come in, Karen? — This lady has been up all night, and wants rest and refreshment."

Karen looked suspiciously at 'this lady,' as she unbolted the lower half of the door and let them in; and again when Winthrop carefully placed her in a chair and then went off into the inner room for one which he knew was more easy, and made her change the first for it.

"And what have ye come up for now, governor?" she said, when she had watched them both, with an unsatisfied look upon her face and a tone of deep satisfaction coming out in her words.

"Breakfast, Karen. What's to be had?"

"Breakfast? La!" — said the old woman, — "if you had told me you's coming — What do you expect I'll have in the house for my breakfast, Governor?"

"Something —," said Winthrop, taking the tongs and settling the sticks of wood in the chimney to burn better. Karen stood and looked at him.

"What have you got, Karen?" said Winthrop, setting up the tongs.

"I ha'n't got nothing for company," said Karen, grinning.

"That'll do very well," said Winthrop. "Give me the coffee and I'll make it; and you see to the bread, Karen. You have milk and cream, haven't you?"

"Yes, Governor."

"And eggs?"

"La! yes."

"Where are they?"

"Mr. Landholm, don't trouble yourself, pray!" said Elizabeth. "I am in no hurry for anything. Pray don't!"

"I don't intend it," said he. "Don't trouble your self. Would you rather go into another room?"

Elizabeth would not; and therefore and thereafter kept herself quiet, watching the motions of Karen and her temporary master. Karen seemed in a maze; but a few practical advices from Winthrop at last brought her back to the usual possession of her senses and faculties.

"Who is she?" Elizabeth heard her whisper as she began to bustle about. And Winthrop's answer, not whispered,

"How long ago do you suppose this coffee was parched?"

"No longer ago than yesterday. La sakes! Governor, — I'll do some fresh for you if you want it."

"No time for that, Karen. You get on with those cakes."

Elizabeth watched Winthrop with odd admiration and curiosity, mixed for the moment with not a little of gratified feeling; but the sense of desolation sitting back of all. He seemed to have come out in a new character, or rather to have taken up an old one; for no one could suppose it worn for the first time. Karen had been set to making cakes with all speed. Winthrop seemed to have taken the rest of the breakfast upon himself. He had found the whereabout of the eggs, and ground some coffee, and made it and set it to boil in Karen's tin coffeepot.

"What are you after now, Mr. Winthrop?" said Karen, looking round from her pan and moulding board. "These'll be in the spider before your coffee's boiled."

"They'll have to be quick, then," said Winthrop, going on with his rummaging.

"What are you after, Governor? — there's nothin' there but the pots and kittles."

One of which, however, Winthrop brought out as if it was the thing wanted, and put upon the fire with water in it. Going back to the receptacle of 'pots and kittles,' he next came forth with the article Karen had designated as the 'spider,' and set that in order due upon its appropriate bed of coals.

"La sakes! Governor!" said Karen, in a sort of fond admiration, — "ha'n't you forgot nothin'?"

"Now Karen," said Winthrop, when she had covered the bottom of the hot iron with her thin cakes, — "you set the table and I'll take care of 'em."

"There's the knife, then," said Karen. "Will ye know when to turn them? There ain't fire enough to bake 'em by the blaze."

"I've not forgotten so much," said Winthrop. "Let's have a cup and saucer and plate, Karen."

"Ye sha'n't have one," said Karen, casting another inquisitive and doubtful glance towards the silent, pale, fixed figure sitting in the middle of her kitchen. He did have one, however, before she had got the two ready; despatched Karen from the table for sugar and cream; and then poured out himself a cup of his own preparation, and set it on Karen's half-spread table, and came to Elizabeth. He did not ask her if she would have it, nor say anything in fact; but gently raising her with one hand, he brought forward her chair with the other, and placed both where he wanted them to be, in the close neighbourhood of the steaming coffee. Once before, Elizabeth had known him take the same sort of superintending care of her, when she was in no condition to take care of herself. It was inexpressibly soothing; and yet she felt as if she could have knelt down on the floor, and given forth her very life in tears. She looked at the coffee with a motionless face, till his hand held it out to her. Not to drink it was impossible, though she was scarcely conscious of swallowing anything but tears. When she took the cup from her lips, she found an egg, hot out of the water, on her plate, which was already supplied also with butter. Her provider was just adding one of the cakes he had been baking.

"I can't eat!" said Elizabeth, looking up.

"You must, —" Winthrop answered.

In the same tone in which he had been acting. Elizabeth obeyed it as involuntarily.

"Who is the lady, Governor?" Karen ventured, when she had possessed herself of the cake-knife, and had got Winthrop fairly seated at his breakfast.

"This lady is the mistress of the place, Karen."

"The mistress! Ain't you the master?" — Karen inquired instantly.

"No. I have no right here any longer, Karen."

"I heered it was selled, but I didn't rightly believe it," the old woman said sadly. "And the mistress 'll be turning me away now?"

"Tell her no," whispered Elizabeth.

"I believe not, Karen, unless you wish it."

"What should I wish it for? I've been here ever since I come with Mis' Landholm, when she come first, and she left me here; and I want to stay here, in her old place, till I'm called to be with her again. D'ye think it'll be long, Governor?"

"Are you in haste, Karen?"

"I don't want fur to stay" said the old woman. "She's gone, and I can't take care o' you no longer, nor no one. I'd like to be gone, too — yes, I would."

"You have work to do yet, Karen. You may take as good care as you can of this lady."

Again Karen looked curiously and suspiciously at her, for a minute in silence.

"Is she one of the Lord's people?" she asked suddenly.

Elizabeth looked up on the instant, in utter astonishment at the question; first at Karen and then at Winthrop. The next thing was a back-sweeping tide of feeling, which made her drop her bread and her cup from her hands, and hide her face in them with a bitter burst of tears. Winthrop looked concerned, and Karen confounded. But she presently repeated her question in a half whisper at Winthrop.

"Is she? —"

"There is more company coming, Karen, for you to take care of," he said quietly. "I hope you have cakes enough. Miss Haye — I see the boat-load has arrived — will you go into the other room?"

She rose, and not seeing where she went, let him lead her. The front part of the house was unfurnished; but to the little square passage-way where the open door let in the breeze from the river, Winthrop brought a chair, and there she sat down. He left her there and went back to see to the other members of the party, and as she guessed to keep them from intruding upon her. She was long alone.

The fresh sweet air blew in upon her hot face and hands, reminding her what sort of a world it came from; and after the first few violent bursts of pain, Elizabeth presently raised her head to look out and see, in a sort of dogged willingness to take the contrast which she knew was there. The soft fair hilly outlines she remembered, in the same August light; — the bright bend of the river — a sloop sail or two pushing lazily up; — the same blue of a summer morning overhead; — the little green lawn immediately at her feet, and the everlasting cedars, with their pointed tops and their hues of patient sobriety — all stood nearly as she had left them, how many years before. And herself — Elizabeth felt as if she could have laid herself down on the doorstep and died, for mere heart-heaviness. In this bright sunny world, what had she to do? The sun had gone out of her heart. What was to become of her? What miserable part should she play, all alone by herself? She despised herself for having eaten breakfast that morning. What business had she to eat, or to have any appetite to eat, when she felt so? But Winthrop had made her do it. What for? Why should he? It was mere aggravation, to take care of her for a day, and then throw her off for ever to take care of herself. How soon would he do that? —

She was musing, her eyes on the ground; and had quite forgotten the sunny landscape before her with all its gentle suggestions; when Winthrop's voice sounded pleasantly in her ear, asking if she felt better. Elizabeth looked up.

"I was thinking," she said, "that if there were nothing better to be had in another world, I could almost find it in my heart to wish I had never been born into this!"

She expected that he would make some answer to her, but he did not. He was quite silent; and Elizabeth presently began to question with herself whether she had said something dreadful. She was busily taking up her own words, since he had not saved her the trouble. She found herself growing very much ashamed of them.

"I suppose that was a foolish speech," she said, after a few moments of perfect silence, — "a speech of impatience."

But Winthrop neither endorsed nor denied her opinion; he said nothing about it; and Elizabeth was exceedingly mortified.

"If you wanted to rebuke me," she thought, "you could not have done it better. I suppose there is no rebuke so sharp as that one is obliged to administer to oneself. And your cool keeping silence is about as effectual a way of telling me that you have no interest in my concerns as even you could have devised."

Elizabeth's eyes must have swallowed the landscape whole, for they certainly took in no distinct part of it.

"How are you going to make yourself comfortable here?" said Winthrop presently; — "these rooms are unfurnished."

She might have said that she did not expect to be comfortable anywhere; but she swallowed that too.

"I will go and see what I can do in the way of getting some furniture together," he went on. "I hope you will be able to find some way of taking rest in the mean time — though I confess I do not see how."

"Pray do not!" said Elizabeth starting up, and her whole manner and expression changing. "I am sure you are tired to death now."

"Not at all. I slept last night."

"How much? Pray do not go looking after anything! You will trouble me very much."

"I should be sorry to do that."

"I can get all the rest I want."

"Where?"

"On the rocks — on the grass."

"Might do for a little while," said Winthrop; — "I hope it will; but I must try for something better."

"Where can you find anything — in this region?"

"I don't know," said he; "but it must be found. If not in this region, in some other."

"To-morrow, Mr. Landholm."

"To-morrow — has its own work," said he; and went.

"Will he go to-morrow?" thought Elizabeth, with a pang at her heart. "Oh, I wish — no, I dare not wish — that I had never been born! What am I to do with myself?"

Conscience suggested very quietly that something might be done; but Elizabeth bade conscience wait for another time, though granting all it advanced. She put that by, as she did Mrs. Nettley and Clam who both presently came where Winthrop had been standing, to make advances of a different nature.

"What'll I do, Miss 'Lizabeth?" said the latter, in a tone that argued a somewhat dismal view of affairs.

"Anything you can find to do."

"Can't find nothin, —" said Clam, "'cept Karen. One corner of the house is filled enough with her; and the rest ha'n't got nothin' in it."

"Let Karen alone, and take care of your own business, Clam."

"If I knowed what 'twas," said the persevering damsel. "I can't make the beds, for there ain't none; nor set the furnitur to rights, for the rooms is 'stressed empty."

"You can let me alone, at all events. The rooms will have something in them before long. You know what to do as well as any one; — if you don't, ask Mr. Landholm."

"Guess I will!" said Clam; "when I want to feel foolisher than I do. Did the furnitur come by the sloop?"

"No. Mr. Landholm will send some. I don't care anything about it."

"Ha! then if he's goin' to send it," said Clam turning away, "the place 'll have to be ready for it, I s'pose."

Mrs. Nettley appeared in Clam's place. Elizabeth was still sitting on the door-step, and though she knew by a side view that one had given place to the other, she did not seem to know it and sat looking straight before her at the sunny landscape.

"It's a beautiful place," said Mrs. Nettley after a little pause of doubt.

"Very beautiful," said Elizabeth coldly.

"I did not know it was so beautiful. And a healthy place, I should suppose."

Elizabeth left the supposition unquestioned.

"You are sadly fatigued, Miss Haye," said Mrs. Nettley after a longer pause than before.

"I suppose I am," said Elizabeth rising, for patience had drawn her last breath; — "I am going down by the water to rest. Don't let any one follow me or call me — I want nothing — only to rest by myself."

And drawing her scarf round her, she strode through the rank grass to the foot of the lawn, and then between scattered rocks and sweetbriars and wild rose-bushes, to the fringe of cedar trees which there clothed the rocks down to the water. Between and beneath them, just where she came out upon the river, an outlooking mass of granite spread itself smooth and wide enough to seat two or three people. The sun's rays could not reach there, except through thick cedar boughs. Cedar trees and the fall of ground hid it from the house; and in front a clear opening gave her a view of the river and opposite shore, and of a cedar-covered point of her own land, outjutting a little distance further on. Solitude, silence, and beauty invited her gently; and Elizabeth threw herself down on the grey lichen-grown stone; but rest was not there.

"Rest!" — she said to herself in great bitterness; — "rest! How can I rest? — or where can there be rest for me? —"

And then passionate nature took its will, and poured out to itself and drank all the deep draughts of pain that passion alone can fill and refill for its own food. Elizabeth's proud head bowed there, to the very rock she sat on. Yet the proud heart would not lay itself down as well; that stood up to breast pain and wrestle with it, and take the full fierce power of the blast that came. Till nature was tired out, — till the frame subsided from convulsions that racked it, into weary repose, — so long the struggle lasted; and then the struggle was not ended, but only the forces on either side had lost the power of carrying it on. And then she sat, leaning against a cedar trunk that gave her its welcome support, which every member and muscle craved; not relieved, but with that curious respite from pain which the dulled senses take when they have borne suffering as long and as sharply as they can.

It was hot in the sun; but only a warm breath of summer air played about Elizabeth where she sat. The little waves of the river glittered and shone and rolled lazily down upon the channel, or curled up in rippling eddies towards the shore. The sunlight was growing ardent upon the hills and the river; but over Elizabeth's head the shade was still unbroken. A soft aromatic smell came from the cedars, now and then broken in upon by a faint puff of fresher air from the surface of the water. Hardly any sound, but the murmur of the ripple at the water's edge and the cheruping of busy grasshoppers upon the lawn. Now and then a locust did sing out; he only said it was August and that the sun was shining hot and sleepily everywhere but under the cedar trees. His song was irresistible. Elizabeth closed her eyes and listened to it, in a queer kind of luxurious rest-taking which was had because mind and body would have it. Pain was put away, in a sort; for the senses of pain were blurred. The aromatic smell of the evergreens was wafted about her; and then came a touch, a most gentle touch, of the south river-breeze upon her face; and then the long dreamy cry of the locust; and the soft plashing sound of the water at her feet. All Elizabeth's faculties were crying for sleep; and sleep came, handed in by the locust and the summer air, and laid its kind touch of forgetfulness upon mind and body. At first she lost herself leaning against the cedar tree, waking up by turns to place herself better; and at last yielding to the overpowering influences without and within, she curled her head down upon a thick bed of moss at her side and gave herself up to such rest as she might.

What sort of rest? Only the rest of the body, which had made a truce with the mind for the purpose. A quiet which knew that storms were not over, but which would be quiet nevertheless. Elizabeth felt that, in her intervals of half-consciousness. But all the closer she clung to her pillow of dry moss. She had a dispensation from sorrow there. When her head left it, it would be to ache again. It should not ache now. Sweet moss! — sweet summer air! — sweet sound of plashing water! — sweet dreamy lullaby of the locust! — Oh if they could put her to sleep for ever! — sing pain out and joy in! —

A vague, half-realized notion of the fight that must be gone through before rest 'for ever' could in any wise be hoped for — of the things that must be gained and the things that must be lost before that 'for ever' rest could in any sort be looked forward to, — and dismissing the thought, Elizabeth blessed her fragrant moss pillow of Lethe and went to sleep again.

How she dreaded getting rested; how she longed for that overpowering fatigue and exhaustion of mind and body to prolong itself! And as the hours went on, she knew that she was getting rested, and that she would have to wake up to everything again by and by. It should not be at anybody's bidding.

"Miss 'Lizabeth! —" sounded Clam's voice in the midst of her slumbers.

"Go away, Clam!" said the sleeper, without opening her eyes.

"Miss 'Lizabeth, ain't ye goin' to eat nothin'?"

"No — Go away."

"Miss 'Lizabeth! — dinner's ready."

"Well! —"

"You're a goin' to kill yourself."

"Don't you kill me!" said Elizabeth impatiently. "Go off."

"To be sure," said Clam as she turned away, — "there ain't much company."

It was very vexing to be disturbed. But just as she was getting quiet again, came the tread of Mrs. Nettley's foot behind her, and Elizabeth knew another colloquy was at hand.

"Are you asleep, Miss Haye?" said the good lady a little timidly.

"No," said Elizabeth lifting her head wearily, — "I wish I were."

"There's dinner got ready for you in the house."

"Let anybody eat it that can. — I can't."

"Wouldn't you be better for taking a little something? I'm afraid you'll give way if you do not."

"I don't care," said Elizabeth. "Let me give way — only let me alone!"

She curled her head down determinately again.

"I am afraid, Miss Haye, you will be ill," said poor Mrs. Nettley.

"I am willing," — said Elizabeth. "I don't care about anything, but to be quiet! —"

Mrs. Nettley went off in despair; and Elizabeth in despair also, found that vexation had effectually driven away sleep. In vain the locust sang and the moss smelled sweet; the tide of feeling had made head again, and back came a rush of disagreeable things, worse after worse; till Elizabeth's brow quitted the moss pillow to be buried in her hands, and her half-quieted spirit shook anew with the fresh-raised tempest. Exhaustion came back again; and thankfully she once more laid herself down to sleep and forgetfulness.

Her sleep was sound this time. The body asserted its rights; and long, long she lay still upon her moss pillow, while the regular deep-drawn breath came and went, fetching slow supplies of strength and refreshment. The sun quitted its overhead position and dipped towards Wut-a-qut-o, behind the high brow of which, in summer-time, it used to hide itself. A slant ray found an opening in the thick tree-tops, and shone full upon Elizabeth's face; but it failed to rouse her; and it soon went up higher and touched a little song sparrow that was twittering in a cedar tree close by. Then the shadows of the trees fell long over the grass towards the rocks on the east.

Elizabeth was awakened at last by a familiar adjuration.

"Miss 'Lizabeth! — you'll catch a Typhus, or an agur, or somethin' dreadful, down there! Don't ye want to live no more in the world?"

Elizabeth sat up, and rested her face on her knees, feeling giddy and sick.

"Don't ye feel bad?"

"Hush, Clam! —"

"I'm sent after ye," said Clam, — "I dursn't hush. Folks thinks it is time you was back in the house."

"Hush! — I don't care what folks think."

"Not what nobody thinks?" said Clam.

"What do you mean!" said Elizabeth flashing round upon her. "Go back into the house. — I will come when I am ready."

"You're ready now," said Clam. "Miss 'Lizabeth, ye ain't fit for anything, for want of eatin'. Come! — they want ye."

"Not much," — thought Elizabeth bitterly, — "if they left it to her to bring me in."

"Are you sick, Miss 'Lizabeth?"

"No."

"He's come home," Clam went on; — "and you never saw the things he has brought! Him and me's been puttin' 'em up and down. Lots o' things. Ain't he a man!"

"'Up and down!'" repeated Elizabeth.

"Egg-zackly," — said Clam; — "Floor-spreads — what-d'ye- call'ems? — and bedsteads — and chairs. He said if he'd know'd the house was all stripped, he'd never have fetched you up here."

"Yes he would," said Elizabeth. "What do I care for a stripped house!" — "with a stripped heart," her thought finished it.

"Well don't you care for supper neither? — for that old thing is a fixin' it," said Clam.

"You must not call her names to me."

"Ain't she old?" said Clam.

"She is a very good old woman, I believe."

"Ain't you comin' Miss 'Lizabeth? They won't sit down without you."

"Who sent you out here?"

"Karen axed where you was; and Mrs. Nettley said she dursn't go look for you; and Mr. Landholm said I was to come and bring you in."

"He didn't, Clam! —"

"As likely as your head's been in the moss there, he did, Miss 'Lizabeth."

"Go yourself back into the house. I'll come when I am ready, and I am not ready yet."

"He ha'n't had nothin' to eat to-day, I don't believe," said Clam, by way of a parting argument. But Elizabeth let her go without seeming to hear her.

She sat with her hands clasped round her knees, looking down upon the water; her eyes slowly filling with proud and bitter tears. Yet she saw and felt how coolly the lowering sunbeams were touching the river now; that evening's sweet breath was beginning to freshen up among the hills; that the daintiest, lightest, cheeriest gilding was upon every mountain top, and wavelet, and pebble, and stem of a tree. "Peace be to thee, fair nature, and thy scenes!" — and peace from them seems to come too. But oh how to have it! Elizabeth clasped her hands tight together and then wrung them mutely. "O mountains — O river — O birds!" — she thought, — "If I could but be as senseless as you — or as good for something!"

CHAPTER XI.

When cockleshells turn silver bells, When wine dreips red frae ilka tree, When frost and snaw will warm us a', Then I'll come doun an' dine wi' thee. JEANNIE DOUGLASS.

The sun was low, near Wut-a-qut-o's brow, when at last slowly and lingeringly, and with feet that, as it were, spurned each step they made, Elizabeth took her way to the house. But no sooner did her feet touch the doorstep than her listless and sullen mood gave place to a fit of lively curiosity — to see what Winthrop had done. She turned to the left into the old keeping-room.

It had been very bare in the morning. Now, it was stocked with neat cane-bottomed chairs, of bird's-eye maple. In the middle of the floor rested an ambitious little mahogany table with claw feet. A stack of green window-blinds stood against the pier between the windows, and at the bottom on the floor lay a paper of screws and hinges. The floor was still bare, to be sure, and so was the room, but yet it looked hopeful compared with the morning's condition. Elizabeth stood opening her eyes in a sort of mazed bewilderment; then hearing a little noise of hammering in the other part of the house, she turned and crossed over to the east room — her sleeping-room of old and now. She went within the door and stood fast.

Her feet were upon a green carpet which covered the room. Round about were more of the maple chairs, looking quite handsome on their green footing. There was a decent dressing- table and chest of drawers of the same wood, in their places; and a round mahogany stand which seemed to be meant for no particular place but to do duty anywhere. And in the corner of the room was Winthrop, with Mrs. Nettley and Clam for assistants, busy putting up a bedstead. He looked up slightly from his work when Elizabeth shewed herself, but gave her no further attention. Clam grinned. Mrs. Nettley was far too intent upon holding her leg of the bedstead true and steady, to notice or know anything else whatever.

Elizabeth looked for a moment, without being able to utter a word; and then turned about and went and stood at the open door, her breast heaving thick and her eyes too full to see a thing before her. Then she heard Winthrop pass behind her and go into the other room. Elizabeth followed quickly. He had stooped to the paper of screws, but stood up when she came in, to speak to her.

"I am ashamed of myself for having so carelessly brought you to a dismantled house. I had entirely forgotten that it was so, in this degree, — though I suppose I must at some time have heard it."

"It would have made no difference, —" said Elizabeth, and said no more.

"I will return to the city to-morrow, and send you up immediately whatever you will give order for. It can be here in a very few days."

Elizabeth looked at the maple chairs and the mahogany table, and she could not speak, for her words choked her. Winthrop stooped again to his paper of screws and hinges and began turning them over.

"What are you going to do?" said Elizabeth, coming a step nearer.

"I am going to see if I can put up these blinds?"

"Blinds!" said Elizabeth.

"Yes. — I was fortunate enough to find some that were not very far from the breadth of the windows. They were too long; and I made the man shorten them. I think they will do."

"What did you take all that trouble for?"

"It was no trouble."

"Where did all these things come from?"

"From Starlings — I hadn't to go any further than that for them."

"How far is it?"

"Twelve miles."

"Twelve miles there and back!"

"Makes twenty-four."

"In this hot day! — I am very sorry, Mr. Landholm!"

"For what?" said he, shouldering one of the green blinds.

"You are not going to put those on yourself?"

"I am going to try — as I said."

"You have done enough day's work," said Elizabeth. "Pray don't, at least to-night. It's quite late. Please don't! —"

"If I don't to-night, I can't to-morrow," said Winthrop, marching out. "I must go home to-morrow."

Home! It shook Elizabeth's heart to hear him speak the old word. But she only caught her breath a little, and then spoke, following him out to the front of the house.

"I would rather they were not put up, Mr. Landholm. I can get somebody to do it."

"Not unless I fail."

"It troubles me very much that you should have such a day."

"I have had just such a day — as I wanted," said Winthrop, measuring with his eye and rule the blind and the window-frame respectively.

"Miss 'Lizabeth, Karen's got the tea all ready, she says," Clam announced from the door; "and she hopes everybody's tired of waitin'."

"You've not had tea! —" exclaimed Elizabeth. "Come then, Mr. Winthrop."

"Not now," said he, driving in his gimlet, — "I must finish this first. 'The night cometh wherein no man can work.'"

Elizabeth shrank inwardly, and struggled with herself.

"But the morning comes also," she said.

Winthrop's eye went up to the top hinge of the blind, and down to the lower one, and up to the top again; busy and cool, it seemed to consider nothing but the hinges. Elizabeth struggled with herself again. She was mortified. But she could not let go the matter.

"Pray leave those things!" she said in another minute. "Come in, and take what is more necessary."

"When my work is done," said he. "Go in, Miss Elizabeth. Karen will give me something by and by."

Elizabeth turned; she could do nothing more in the way of persuasion. As she set her foot heavily on the door-step, she saw Clam standing in the little passage, her lips slightly parted in a satisfied bit of a smile. Elizabeth was vexed, proud, and vexed again, in as many successive quarter seconds. Her foot was heavy no longer.

"Have you nothing to do, Clam?"

"Lots," said the damsel.

"Why aren't you about it, then?"

"I was waitin' till you was about your'n, Miss 'Lizabeth. I like folks to be out o' my way."

"Do you! Take care and keep out of mine," said her mistress. "What are you going to do now?"

"Settle your bed, Miss 'Lizabeth. It's good we've got linen enough, anyhow."

"Linen, —" said Elizabeth, — "and a bedstead, — have you got a bed to put on it?"

"There's been care took for that," said Clam, with the same satisfied expression and a little turn of her head.

Half angry and half sick, Elizabeth left her, and went in through her new-furnished keeping-room, to Karen's apartment where the table was bountifully spread and Mrs. Nettley and Karen awaited her coming. Elizabeth silently sat down.

"Ain't he comin'?" said Karen.

"No — I am very sorry — Mr. Landholm thinks he must finish what he is about first."

"He has lots o' thoughts," said Karen discontentedly, — "he'd think just as well after eatin'. — Well, Miss — Karen's done her best — There's been worse chickens than those be — Mis' Landholm used to cook 'em that way, and she didn't cook 'em no better. I s'pose he'll eat some by'm by — when he's done thinkin'."

She went off, and Elizabeth was punctually and silently taken care of by Mrs. Nettley. The meal over, she did not go back to her own premises; but took a stand in the open kitchen door, for a variety of reasons, and stood there, looking alternately out and in. The sun had set, the darkness was slowly gathering; soft purple clouds floated up from the west, over Wut-a-qut-o's head, which however the nearer heads of pines and cedars prevented her seeing. A delicate fringe of evergreen foliage edged upon the clear white sky. The fresher evening air breathed through the pine and cedar branches, hardly stirred their stiff leaves, but brought from them tokens of rare sweetness; brought them to Elizabeth's sorrowful face, and passed on. Elizabeth turned her face from the wind and looked into the house. Karen had made her appearance again, and was diligently taking away broken meats and soiled dishes and refreshing the look of the table; setting some things to warm and some things to cool; giving the spare plate and knife and fork the advantage of the best place at table; brushing away crumbs, and smoothing down the salt-cellar. "You are over particular!" thought Elizabeth; — "it would do him no harm to come after me in handling the salt-spoon! — that even that trace of me should be removed." She looked out again.

Her friend the locust now and then was reminding her of the long hot day they had passed through together; and the intervals between were filled up by a chorus of grasshoppers and crickets and katydids. Soft and sweet blew the west wind again; that spoke not of the bygone day, with its burden and heat; but of rest, and repose, and the change that cometh even to sorrowful things. The day was passed and gone. "But if one day is passed, another is coming," — thought Elizabeth; and tears, hot and bitter tears, sprang to her eyes. How could those clouds float so softly! — how could the light and shadow rest so lovely on them! — how could the blue ether look so still and clear! "Can one be like that?" — thought Elizabeth. "Can I? — with this boiling depth of passion and will in my nature? — One can —" and she again turned her eyes within. But nothing was there, save the table, the supper, and Karen. The question arose, what she herself was standing there for? but passion and will said they did not care! she would stand there; and she did. It was pleasant to stand there; for passion and will, though they had their way, seemed to her feeling to be quieted down under nature's influences. Perhaps the most prominent thought now was of a great discord between nature and her, between her and right, — which was to be made up. But still, while her face was towards the western sky and soft wind, and her mind thought this, her ear listened for a step on the kitchen floor. The colours of the western sky had grown graver and cooler before it came.

It came, and there was the scrape of a chair on the wooden floor. He had sat down, and Karen had got up; but Elizabeth would not look in.

"Are ye hungry enough now, Governor?"

"I hope so, Karen, — for your sake."

"Ye don't care much for your own," said Karen discontentedly.

Perhaps Winthrop — perhaps Elizabeth, thought that she made up his lack of it. Elizabeth watched, stealthily, to see how the old woman waited upon him — hovered about him — supplied his wants, actual and possible, and stood looking at him when she could do nothing else. She could not understand the low word or two with which Winthrop now and then rewarded her. Bitter feeling overcame her at last; she turned away, too much out of tune with nature to notice any more, unless by way of contrast, what nature had spread about her and over her. She went round the house again to the front and sat down in the doorway. The stars were out, the moonlight lay soft on the water, the dews fell heavily.

"Miss Lizzie! — you'll catch seven deaths out there! — the day's bad enough, but the night's five times worse," — Clam exclaimed.

"I shan't catch but one," Elizabeth said gloomily.

"Your muslin's all wet, drinchin'!"

"It will dry."

"I can hang it up, I s'pose; but what'll I do with you if you get sick?"

"Nothing whatever! Let me alone, Clam."

"Mis' Nettles! —" said Clam going in towards the kitchen, — "Mis' Nettles! — where's Mr. Landholm? — Governor Winthrop — here's Miss 'Lizabeth unhookin' all them blinds you've been a hookin' up."

"What do you mean, Clam?"

"I don't mean no harm," said Clam lowering her tone, — "but Miss 'Lizabeth does. I wish you would go and see what she is doing, Mr. Winthrop; she's makin' work for somebody; and if it ain't nobody else, it's the doctor."

Winthrop however sat still, and Clam departed in ignorance how he had received her information. Presently however his supper was finished, and he sauntered round to the front of the house. He paused before the doorway where its mistress sat.

"It is too damp for you there."

"I don't feel it."

"I do."

"I am not afraid of it."

"If the fact were according to your fears, that would be a sufficient answer."

"It will do me no harm."

"It must not; and that it may not, you must go in," he said gravely.

"But you are out in it," said Elizabeth, who was possessed with an uncompromising spirit just then.

"I am out in it. Well?"

"Only — that I may venture —" she did not like to finish her sentence.

"What right have you to venture anything?"

"The same right that other people have."

"I risk nothing," said he gravely.

"I haven't much to risk."

"You may risk your life."

"My life!" said Elizabeth. "What does it signify! —" But she jumped up and ran into the house.

The next morning there was an early breakfast, for which Elizabeth was ready. Then Winthrop took her directions for things to be forwarded from Mannahatta. Then there was a quiet leave-taking; on his part kind and cool, on hers too full of impassioned feeling to be guarded or constrained. But there was reason and excuse enough for that, as she knew, or guard and restraint would both have been there. When she quitted his hand, it was to hide herself in her room and have one struggle with the feeling of desolation. It was a long one.

Elizabeth came out at last, book in hand.

"Dear Miss Haye!" Mrs. Nettley exclaimed — "you're dreadful worn with this hot weather and being out of doors all day yesterday!"

"I am going out again," said Elizabeth. "Clam will know where to find me."

"If you had wings, I'd know where to find you," said Clam; "but on your feet 'taint so certain."

"You needn't try, unless it is necessary," said Elizabeth dryly.

"But dear Miss Haye!" pleaded Mrs. Nettley, — "you're not surely going out to try the sun again to-day?"

Elizabeth's lip quivered.

"It's the pleasantest place, Mrs. Nettley — I am quite in the shade — I can't be better than I am there, thank you."

"Don't she look dreadful!" said the good lady, as Elizabeth went from the house. "Oh, I never have seen anybody so changed!"

"She's pulled down a bit since she come," said Karen, who gave Elizabeth but a moderate share of her good will at any time. "She's got her mind up high enough, anyway, for all she's gone through."

"Who hain't?" said Clam. "Hain't the Governor his mind up high enough? And you can't pull him down, but you can her."

"His don't never need," said Karen.

"Well — I don' know, —" said Clam, picking up several things about the floor — "but them high minds is a trial."

"Hain't you got one yourself, girl?" said old Karen.

"Hope so, ma'am. I take after my admirers. That's all the way I live, — keeping my head up — always did."

Karen deigned no reply, but went off.

"Mis' Nettles," said Clam, "do you think Miss Haye 'll ever stand it up here all alone in this here place?"

"Why not?" said Mrs. Nettley innocently.

"I guess your head ain't high enough up for to see her'n," said Clam, in scornful impatience. And she too quitted the conversation in disgust.

CHAPTER XII.

'Resolve,' the haughty moralist would say, 'The single act is all that we demand.' Alas! such wisdom bids a creature fly Whose very sorrow is, that time hath shorn His natural wings. WORDSWORTH.

The book in Elizabeth's hand was her bible. It was the next thing, and the only thing to be done after Winthrop's going away, that she could think of, to begin upon the first chapter of Matthew. It was action, and she craved action. It was an undertaking; for her mind remembered and laid hold of Winthrop's words — "Ask honestly, of your own conscience and of God, at each step, what obligation upon you grows out of what you read." And it was an undertaking that Winthrop had set her upon. So she sought out her yesterday's couch of moss with its cedar canopy, and sat down in very different mood from yesterday's mood, and put her bible on her lap. It was a feeling of dull passive pain now; a mood that did not want to sleep.

The day itself was very like yesterday. Elizabeth listened a minute to the sparrow and the locust and the summer wind, but presently she felt that they were overcoming her; and she opened her book to the first chapter of Matthew. She was very curious to find her first obligation. Not that she was unconscious of many resting upon her already; but those were vague, old, dimly recognized obligations; she meant to take them up now definitely, in the order in which they might come.

She half paused at the name in the first verse, — was there not a shadow of obligation hanging around that? But if there were, she would find it more clearly set forth and in detail as she went on. She passed it for the present.

From that she went on smoothly as far as the twenty-first verse. That stopped her.

"And she shall bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins."

"'His people,' —" thought Elizabeth. "I am not one of his people. Ought I not to be?"

The words of the passage did not say; but an imperative whisper at her heart said "Ay!"

"His people! — but how can I be one of his people?" she thought again. And impatience bade her turn over the leaf, and find something more or something else; but conscience said, "Stop — and deal with this obligation first."

"What obligation? — 'He shall save his people from their sins.' Then certainly I ought to let him save me from mine — that is the least I can do. But what is the first thing — the first step to be taken? I wish Mr. Landholm was here to tell me. —"

She allowed herself to read on to the end of the page, but that gave her not much additional light. She would not turn over the leaf; she had no business with the second obligation till the first was mastered; she sat looking at the words in a sort of impatient puzzle; and not permitting herself to look forward, she turned back a leaf. That gave her but the titlepage of the New Testament. She turned back another, to the last chapter of the Old. Its opening words caught her eye.

"For behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch."

"The proud, and they that do wickedly — that is my character and name truly," thought Elizabeth. "I am of them. — And it is from this, and this fate, that 'his people' shall be delivered. But how shall I get to be of them?" Her eye glanced restlessly up to the next words above —

"Then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not."

"'Then,' — in that day," — thought Elizabeth, "I can discern between them now, without waiting for that. — Winthrop Landholm is one that serveth God — I am one that serve him not. There is difference enough, I can see now — but this speaks of the difference at that day; another sort of difference. — Then I ought to be a servant of God —"

The obligation was pretty plain.

"Well, I will, when I find out how," — she began. But conscience checked her.

"This is not the first chapter of Matthew," she said then. "I will go back to that."

Her eye fell lower, to the words,

"But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings."

The tears started to Elizabeth's eyes. "This is that same who will save his people from their sins, — is it? — and that is his healing? Oh, I want it! — There is too much difference between me and them. He shall save his people from their sins, — I have plenty, — plenty. But how? — and what shall I do? It don't tell me here."

It did not; yet Elizabeth could not pass on. She was honest; she felt an obligation, arising from these words, which yet she did not at once recognize. It stayed her. She must do something — what could she do? It was a most unwelcome answer that at last slid itself into her mind. Ask to be made one of 'his people' — or to be taught how to become one? Her very soul started. Ask? — but now the obligation stood full and strong before her, and she could cease to see it no more. Ask? — why she never did such a thing in her whole life as ask God to do anything for her. Not of her own mind, at her own choice, and in simplicity; her thoughts and feelings had perhaps at some time joined in prayers made by another, and in church, and in solemn time. But here? with the blue sky over her, in broad day, and in open air? It did not seem like praying time. Elizabeth shut her book. Her heart beat. Duty and she were at a struggle now; she knew which must give way, but she was not ready yet. It never entered her head to question the power or the will to which she must apply herself, no more than if she had been a child. Herself she doubted; she doubted not him. Elizabeth knew very little of his works or word, beyond a vague general outline, got from sermons; but she knew one servant of God. That servant glorified him; and in the light which she saw and loved, Elizabeth could do no other but, in her measure, to glorify him too. She did not doubt, but she hesitated, and trembled. The song of the birds and the flow of the water mocked her hesitancy and difficulty. But Elizabeth was honest; and though she trembled she would not and could not disobey the voice of conscience which set before her one clear, plain duty. She was in great doubt whether to stand or to kneel; she was afraid of being seen if she knelt; she would not be so irreverent as to pray sitting; she rose to her feet, and clasping a cedar tree with her arms, she leaned her head beside the trunk, and whispered her prayer, to him who saves his people from their sins, that he would make her one of them, she did not know how, she confessed; she prayed that he would teach her.

She kept her position and did not move her bended head, till the tears which had gathered were fallen or dried; then she sat down and took up her book again and looked down into the water. What had she done? Entered a pledge, she felt, to be what she had prayed to be; else her prayer would be but a mockery, and Elizabeth was in earnest. "What a full-grown fair specimen he is of his class," she thought, her mind recurring again to her adviser and exemplar; "and I — a poor ignorant thing in the dark, groping for a bit of light to begin!" — The tears gathered again; she opened the second chapter of Matthew.

She looked off again to feel glad. Was a pledge entered only on her side? — was there not an assurance given somewhere, by lips that cannot lie, that prayer earnestly offered should not be in vain? She could not recall the words, but she was sure of the thing; and there was more than one throb of pleasure, and a tiny shoot of grateful feeling in her heart, before Elizabeth went back to her book. What was the next 'obligation'? She was all ready for it.

Nothing stopped her much in the second chapter. The 'next obligation' did not start up till the words of John the Baptist in the beginning of the third —

"Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

"What is repentance? — and what is the kingdom of heaven?" pondered Elizabeth. "I wish somebody was here to tell me. Repent? — I know what it is to repent — it is to change one's mind about something, and to will just against what one willed before. — And what ought I to repent about? — Everything wrong! Everything wrong! — That is, to turn about and set my face just the other way from what it has been all my life! — I might as good take hold of this moving earth with my two fingers and give it a twist to go westwards. —"

Elizabeth shut up her book, and laid it on the moss beside her.

"Repent? — yes, it's an obligation. Oh what shall I do with it! —"

She would have liked to do with it as she did with her head — lay it down.

"These wrong things are iron-strong in me — how can I unscrew them from their fastenings, and change all the out-goings and in-comings of my mind? — when the very hands that must do the work have a bent the wrong way. How can I? — I am strong for evil — I am weak as a child for good."

"I will try!" she said the next instant, lifting her head up — "I will try to do what I can. — But that is not changing my whole inner way of feeling — that is not repenting. Perhaps it will come. Or is this determination of mine to try, the beginning of it? I do not know that it is — I cannot be sure that it is. No — one might wish to be a good lawyer, without at all being willing to go through all the labour and pains for it which Winthrop Landholm has taken. — No, this is not, or it may not be, repentance — I cannot be sure that it is anything. But will it not come? or how can I get it? How alone I am from all counsel and help! — Still it must be my duty to try — to try to do particular things right, as they come up, even though I cannot feel right all at once. And if I try, won't the help come, and the knowledge? — What a confusion it is! In the midst of it all it is my duty to repent, and I haven't the least idea how to set about it, and I can't do it! O I wish Winthrop Landholm was here! —"

Elizabeth pondered the matter a good deal; and the more she thought about it, the worse the confusion grew. The duty seemed more imminent, the difficulty more obstinate. She was driven at last, unwillingly again, to her former ressource — what she could not give herself, to ask to have given her. She did it, with tears again, that were wrung from breaking pride and weary wishing. More quietly then she resolved to lay off perplexing care, and to strive to meet the moment's duty, as it arose. And by this time with a very humbled and quieted brow, she went on with her chapter. The words of the next verse caught her eye and her mind at once.

"For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."

"Is not this it?" cried Elizabeth. "If I do my part — all I can — is not that preparing the way for him to do what I cannot do?"

She thought so, at any rate, and it comforted her.

"Miss 'Lizabeth," said Clam, just behind her, "Karen wants to know what time you'll have dinner?"

"I don't care."

"That's 'zackly Karen's time o' day," said Clam discontentedly.

"I don't care at all, Clam."

"And she says, what 'll you have?"

"Nothing — or anything. Don't talk to me about it."

"Ain't much good in choosing," said Clam, "when there ain't three things to choose from. How long can you live on pork, Miss 'Lizabeth?"

Elizabeth looked up impatiently.

"Longer than you can. Clam! —"

"Ma'am?"

"Let me alone. I don't care about anything."

Clam went off; but ten minutes had not gone when she was back again.

"Miss Lizzie, — Anderese wants to know if he'll go on cuttin' wood just as he's a mind to?"

"Anderese? — who's he?"

"Karen and him used to be brother and sister when they was little."

"What does he want?"

"Wants to know if he shall go on cuttin' wood just as ever."

"Cutting wood! — what wood?"

"I s'pect it's your trees."

"Mine! What trees?"

"Why the trees in the woods, Miss Lizzie. As long as they was nobody's, Anderese used to cut 'em for the fire; now they're yourn, he wants to know what he shall do with 'em."

"Let 'em alone, certainly! Don't let him cut any more."

"Then the next question is, where'll he go for something to make a fire?"

"To make a fire!"

"Yes, Miss Lizzie — unless no time 'll do for dinner as well as any time. Can't cook pork without a fire. And then you'd want the kettle boiled for tea, I reckon."

"Can't he get wood anywhere, Clam? without cutting down trees."

"There ain't none to sell anywheres — he says."

"What trees has he been cutting?" said Elizabeth, rousing herself in despair.

"Any that come handy, I s'pose, Miss Lizzie — they'll all burn, once get 'em in the chimney."

"He mustn't do that. Tell him — but you can't tell him— and I can't. —"

She hesitated, between the intense desire to bid him cut whatever he had a mind, and the notion of attending to all her duties, which was strong upon her.

"Tell him to cut anything he pleases, for to-day — I'll see about it myself the next time."

Two minutes' peace; and then Clam was at her back again.

"Miss Lizzie, he don't know nothin' and he wants to know a heap. Do you want him to cut down a cedar, he says, or an oak, or somethin' else. There's the most cedars, he says; but Karen says they snap all to pieces."

Elizabeth rose to her feet.

"I suppose I can find a tree in a minute that he can cut without doing any harm. — Bring me a parasol, Clam, — and come along with me."

Clam and the parasol came out at one door, and Anderese and his axe at another, as Elizabeth slowly paced towards the house. The three joined company. Anderese was an old grey- haired negro, many years younger however than his sister. Elizabeth asked him, "Which way?"

"Which way the young lady pleases."

"I don't please about it," said Elizabeth, — "I don't know anything about it — lead to the nearest place — where a tree can be soonest found."

The old man shouldered his axe and went before, presently entering a little wood path; of which many struck off into the leafy wilderness which bordered the house. Leaves overhead, rock and moss under foot; a winding, jagged, up and down, stony, and soft green way, sometimes the one, sometimes the other. Elizabeth's bible was still in her hand, her finger still kept it open at the second chapter of Matthew; she went musingly along over grey lichens and sunny green beds of moss, thinking of many things. How she was wandering in Winthrop's old haunts, where the trees had once upon a time been cut by him, she now to order the cutting of the fellow trees. Strange it was! How she was desolate and alone, nobody but herself there to do it; her father gone; and she without another protector or friend to care for the trees or her either. There were times when the weight of pain, like the pressure of the atmosphere, seemed so equally distributed that it was distinctly felt nowhere, — or else so mighty that the nerves of feeling were benumbed. Elizabeth wandered along in a kind of maze, half wondering half indignant at herself that she could walk and think at all. She did not execute much thinking, to do her justice; she passed through the sweet broken sunlight and still shadows, among the rough trunks of the cedars, as if it had been the scenery of dreamland. On every hand were up-shooting young pines, struggling oaks that were caught in thickets of cedar, and ashes and elms that were humbly asking leave to spread and see the light and reach their heads up to freedom and free air. They asked in vain. Elizabeth was only conscious of the struggling hopes and wishes that seemed crushed for ever, her own.

"She don't see nothin'," whispered Clam to Anderese, whom she had joined in front. "She's lookin' into vacancy. If you don't stop, our axe and parasol 'll walk all round the place, and one 'll do as much work as the other. I can't put up my awning till you cut down something to let the sun in."

The old man glanced back over his shoulder at his young lady.

"What be I goin' to do?" he whispered, with a sidelong glance at Clam.

"Fling your axe into something," said Clam. "That'll bring her up."

The old man presently stepped aside to a young sapling oak, which having outgrown its strength bent its slim altitude in a beautiful parabolic curve athwart the sturdy stems of cedars and yellow pines which lined the path. Anderese stopped there and looked at Elizabeth. She had stopped too, without noticing him, and stood sending an intent, fixed, far-going look into the pretty wilderness of rock and wood on the other side of the way. All three stood silently.

"Will this do to come down, young lady?" inquired Anderese, with his axe on his shoulder. Elizabeth faced about.

"'Twon't grow up to make a good tree — it's slantin' off so among the others." He brought his axe down.

"That?" said Elizabeth, — "that reaching-over one? O no! you mustn't touch that. What is it?"

"It's an oak, miss; it's good wood."

"It's a better tree. No indeed — leave that. Never cut such trees. Won't some of those old things do?"

"Them? — them are cedars, young lady."

"Well, won't they do?"

"They'd fly all over and burn the house up," said Clam.

"What do you want?"

"Some o' the best there is, I guess," said Clam.

"Hard wood is the best, young lady."

"What's that?"

"Oak — maple — hickory — and there's ash, and birch — 'tain't very good."

Elizabeth sighed, and led the way on again, while the old negro shouldered his axe and followed with Clam; probably sighing on his own part, if habitual gentleness of spirit did not prevent. Nobody ever knew Clam do such a thing.

"Look at her!" muttered the damsel; — "going with her head down, — when'll she see a tree? Ain't we on a march! Miss 'Lizabeth! — the tree won't walk home after it's cut."

"What?" said her mistress.

"How'll it get there?"

"What?"

"The tree, Miss Lizzie — when Anderese has cut it."

"Can't he carry some home?"

"He'll be a good while about it — if he takes one stick at a time — and we ain't nigh home, neither."

Elizabeth came to a stand, and finally turned in another direction, homewards. But she broke from the path then, and took up the quest in earnest, leading her panting followers over rocks and moss-beds and fallen cedars and tangled vines and undergrowth, which in many places hindered their way. She found trees enough at last, and near enough home; but both she and her companions had had tree-hunting to their satisfaction. Elizabeth commissioned Anderese to find fuel in another way; and herself in some disgust at her new charge, returned to her rock and her bible. She tried to go through with the third chapter of Matthew; and her eye did go over it, though often swimming in tears. But that was the end of her studies at that time. Sorrow claimed the rest of the day for its own, and held the whole ground. Her household and its perplexities — her bible and its teachings — her ignorance and her necessities, — faded away from view; and instead thereof rose up the lost father, the lost home, and the lost friend yet dearer than all.

"What's become of Miss Haye?" whispered Mrs. Nettley late in the evening.

"Don' know," answered Clam. "Melted away — all that can melt, and shaken down — all that can shake, of her. That ain't all, so I s'pose there's somethin' left."

"Poor thing! — no wonder she takes it hard," said the good lady.

"No," said Clam, — she never did take nothin' easy."

"Has she been crying all the afternoon?"

"Don' know," said Clam; "the eye of curiosity ain't invited; but she don't take that easy neither, when she's about it. I've seen her cry — once; she'd do a year o' your crying in half an hour."

CHAPTER XIII.

O Land of Quiet! to thy shore the surf Of the perturbed Present rolls and sleeps; Our storms breathe soft as June upon thy turf, And lure out blossoms. LOWELL.

They were days of violent grief which for a little while followed each other. Elizabeth spent them out of doors; in the woods, on the rocks, by the water's edge. She would take her bible out with her, and sometimes try to read a little; but a very few words would generally touch some spring which set her off upon a torrent of sorrow. Pleasant things past or out of her reach, the present time a blank, the future worse than a blank, — she knew nothing else. She did often in her distress repeat the prayer she had made over the first chapter of Matthew; but that was rather the fruit of past thought; she did not think in those days; she gave up to feeling; and the hours were a change from bitter and violent sorrow to dull and listless quiet. Conscience sometimes spoke of duties resolved upon; impatient pain always answered that their time was not now.

The first thing that roused her was a little letter from Winthrop, which came with the pieces of furniture and stores he sent up to her order. It was but a word, — or two words; one of business, to say what he had done for her; and one of kindness, to say what he hoped she was doing for herself. Both words were brief, and cool; but with them, with the very handwriting of them, came a waft of that atmosphere of influence — that silent breath of truth which every character breathes — which in this instance was sweetened with airs from heaven. The image of the writer rose before her brightly, in its truth and uprightness and high and fixed principle; and though Elizabeth wept bitter tears at the miserable contrast of her own, they were more healing tears than she had shed all those days. When she dried them, it was with a new mind, to live no more hours like those she had been living. Something less distantly unlike him she could be, and would be. She rose and went into the house, while her eyes were yet red, and gave her patient and unwearied attention, for hours, to details of household arrangements that needed it. Her wits were not wandering, nor her eyes; nor did they suffer others to wander. Then, when it was all done, she took her bonnet and went back to her old wood-place and her bible, with an humbler and quieter spirit than she had ever brought to it before. It was the fifth chapter of Matthew now.

The first beatitude puzzled her. She did not know what was meant by 'poor in spirit,' and she could not satisfy herself. She passed it as something to be made out by and by, and went on to the others. There were obligations enough.

"'Meek?'" said Elizabeth, — "I suppose if there is anything in the world I am not, it is meek. I am the very, very opposite. What can I do with this? It is like a fire in my veins. Can I cool it? And if I could control the outward seeming of it, that would not be the change of the thing itself. Besides, I couldn't, I must be meek, if I am ever to seem so."

She went on sorrowfully to the next.

"'Hunger and thirst after righteousness' — I do desire it — I do not 'hunger and thirst.' I don't think I do — and it is those and those only to whom the promise is given. I am so miserable that I cannot even wish enough for what I need most. O God, help me to know what I am seeking, and to seek it more earnestly! —"

"'Merciful?'" she went on with tears in her eyes — "I think I am merciful. — I haven't been tried, but I am pretty sure I am merciful. But there it is — one must have all the marks, I suppose, to be a Christian. Some people may be merciful by nature — I suppose I am. —"

"Blessed are the pure in heart."

She stopped there, and even shut up her book, in utter sorrow and shame, that if 'pure in heart' meant pure to the All- seeing eye, hers was so very, very far from it. There was not a little scrap of her heart fit for looking into. And what could she do with it? The words of Job recurred to her, — "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one."

Elizabeth was growing 'poor in spirit' before she knew what the words meant. She went on carefully, sorrowfully, earnestly — till she came to the twenty-fourth verse of the sixth chapter. It startled her.

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon."

"That is to say then," said Elizabeth, "that I must devote myself entirely to God — or not at all. All my life and possessions and aims. It means all that! —"

And for 'all that' she felt she was not ready. One corner for self-will and doing her own pleasure she wanted somewhere; and wanted so obstinately, that she felt, as it were, a mountain of strong unwillingness rise up between God's requirements and her; an iron lock upon the door of her heart, the key of which she could not turn, shutting and barring it fast against his entrance and rule. And she sat down before the strong mountain and the locked door, as before something which must, and could not, give way; with a desperate feeling that it must — with another desperate feeling that it would not.

Now was Elizabeth very uncomfortable, and she hated discomfort. She would have given a great deal to make herself right; if a movement of her hand could have changed her and cleared away the hindrance, it would have been made on the instant; her judgment and her wish were clear; but her will was not. Unconditional submission she thought she was ready for; unconditional obedience was a stumbling-block before which she stopped short. She knew there would come up occasions when her own will would take its way — she could not promise for it that it would not; and she was afraid to give up her freedom utterly and engage to serve God in everything. An enormous engagement, she felt! How was she to meet with ten thousand the enemy that came against her with twenty thousand? — Ay, how? But if he were not met — if she were to be the servant of sin for ever — all was lost then! And she was not going to be lost; therefore she was going to be the unconditional servant of God. When? —

The tears came, but they did not flow; they could not, for the fever of doubt and questioning. She dashed them away as impertinent asides. What were they to the matter in hand. Elizabeth was in distress. But at the same time it was distress that she was resolved to get out of. She did not know just what to do; but neither would she go into the house till something was done.

"If Mr. Landholm were here! —"

"What could he do?" answered conscience; "there is the question before you, for you to deal with. You must deal with it. It's a plain question."

"I cannot" — and "Who will undertake for me?" — were Elizabeth's answering cry.

Her heart involuntarily turned to the great helper, but what could or would he do for her? — it was his will she was thwarting. Nevertheless, "to whom should she go?" — the shaken needle of her mind's compass turned more and more steadily to its great centre. There was light in no other quarter but on that 'wicket-gate' towards which Bunyan's Pilgrim first long ago set off to run. With some such sorrowful blind looking, she opened to her chapter of Matthew again, and carelessly and sadly turned over a leaf or two; till she saw a word which though printed in the ordinary type of the rest, stood out to her eyes like the lettering on a signboard. "ASK." —

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."

The tears came then with a gush.

"Ask what? — it doesn't say, —but it must be whatever my difficulty needs — there is no restriction. 'Knock'! — I will — till it is opened to me — as it will be! —"

The difficulty was not gone — the mountain had not suddenly sunk to a level; but she had got a clue to get over the one, and daylight had broken through the other. Elizabeth felt not changed at all; no better, and no tenderer; but she laid hold of those words as one who has but uncertain footing puts his arms round a strong tree, — she clung as one clings there; and clasped them with assurance of life. Ask? — did she not ask, with tears that streamed now; she knocked, clasping that stronghold with more glad and sure clasp; she knew then that everything would be 'made plain' in the rough places of her heart.

She did not sit still long then for meditation or to rest; her mood was action. She took her bible from the moss, and with a strong beating sense both of the hopeful and of the forlorn in her condition, she walked slowly through the grass to the steps of her house door. As she mounted them a new thought suddenly struck her, and instead of turning to the right she turned to the left.

"Mrs. Nettley," said Elizabeth as she entered the sitting- room, "isn't it very inconvenient for you to be staying here with me?"

Good Mrs. Nettley was sitting quietly at her work, and looked up at this quite startled.

"Isn't it inconvenient for you?" Elizabeth repeated.

"Miss Haye! — it isn't inconvenient; — I am very glad to do it — if I can be of any service —"

"It is very kind of you, and very pleasant to me; but aren't you wanted at home?"

"I don't think I am wanted, Miss Haye, — at least I am sure my brother is very glad to have me do anything for Mr. Landholm, or for you, I am sure; — if I can."

Elizabeth's eye flashed; but then in an instant she called herself a fool, and in the same breath wondered why it should be, that Winthrop's benevolence must put him in the way of giving her so much pain.

"Who fills your place at home, while you are taking care of me here, Mrs. Nettley?"

"I don't suppose any of 'em can just do that," said the good lady with a little bit of a laugh at the idea.

"Well, is there any one to take care of your house and your brother?"

"Mr. Landholm — he said he'd see to it."

"Mr. Landholm! —"

"He promised he'd take care of George and the house as well. — I dare say they don't manage much amiss."

"But who takes care of Mr. Landholm?"

"Nobody does, if he don't himself," said Mrs. Nettley with a shake of her head. "He don't give that pleasure to any other living person."

"Not when you are at home?"

"It makes no difference, Miss Haye," said Mrs. Nettley going on with her sewing. "He never will. He never did."

"But surely he boards somewhere, don't he? He don't live entirely by himself in that room?"

"That's what he always used," said Mrs. Nettley; "he does take his dinners somewhere now, I believe. But nothing else. He makes his own tea and breakfast, — that is! — for he don't drink anything. If it was any one else, one would be apt to say one would grow unsociable, living in such a way; but it don't make any change in him, no more than in the sun, what sort of a place he lives in."

Elizabeth stood for a minute very still; and then said gently,

"Mrs. Nettley, I mustn't let you stay here with me."

"Why not, Miss Haye? — I am sure they don't want me. I can just as well stay as not. I am very glad to stay."

"You are wanted more there than here. I must learn to get along alone. — It don't matter how soon I begin."

"Dear Miss Haye, not yet. Never mind now — we'll talk about it by and by," said Mrs. Nettley hurriedly and somewhat anxiously. She was a little afraid of Elizabeth.