A morning or two after Alison chanced to leave half a dozen teaspoons upon the sideboard in the breakfast-room; they were of solid silver, and quite thick. She was going to rub them herself, I believe, and went into the china-closet, which opens from the room, for the silver-soap. The breakfast-room was left vacant, and it was vacant when she returned to it, and she insists, with a quiet conviction which it is hardly reasonable to doubt, that no human being did or could have entered the room without her knowledge. When she came back to the sideboard every one of those spoons lay there bent double. She showed them to me when I came home at noon. Had they been pewter toys they could not have been more completely twisted out of shape than they were. I took them without any remarks (I began to feel as if this mystery were assuming uncomfortable proportions), put them away, just as I found them, into a small cupboard in the wall of the breakfast-room, locked the cupboard door with the only key in the house which fitted it, put the key in my inner vest pocket, and meditatively ate my dinner.

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

"Really, Mrs. Hotchkiss!" said the lady, with a slight smile, and that indefinite, quickly smothered change of eye which signifies, "I don't believe a word of it!" "Are you sure that there is not a mistake somewhere, or a little mental hallucination? The story is very entertaining, but—I beg your pardon—I should be interested to see those spoons."

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

"Oh!" said our visitor, significantly.

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

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

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

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

I had learned that very week from Miss Fellows the spiritual alphabet with which she was in the habit of "communicating with her dead mother." I had never asked her, nor had she proposed, to use it herself for my benefit. I had meant to try all other means of investigation before resorting to it. Now, however being alone, and being perplexed and annoyed by my sense of having invisible company, I turned and spelled out upon the table, so many raps to a letter till the question was complete:—

"What do you want of me?"

Instantly the answer came rapping back:—

"Stretch down your hand."

I put my fingers under the table, and I felt, as indubitably as I ever felt a touch in my life, the grasp of a warm, human hand.

I added to the broken paragraph in the letter to my friend a brief account of the occurrence, and reiterated my entreaties that he would come at his earliest convenience to my house. He was an Episcopal clergyman, by the way, and I considered that his testimony would uphold my fast-sinking character for veracity among my townspeople. I began to have an impression that this dilemma in which I found myself was a pretty serious one for a man of peaceable disposition and honest intentions to be in.

About this time I undertook to come to a little better understanding with Miss Fellows. I took her away alone, and having tried my best not to frighten the life out of her by my grave face, asked her seriously and kindly to tell me whether she supposed herself to have any connection with the phenomena in my house. To my surprise she answered promptly that she thought she had. I repressed a whistle, and "asked for information."

"The presence of a medium renders easy what would otherwise be impossible," she replied. "I offered to go away, Mr. Hotchkiss, in the beginning."

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

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

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

"But they—I mean something—rapped one night before you came," I suggested.

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

She lowered her voice reverently, and I was fain to hush the laugh upon my lips. Whatever the thing might prove to be to me, it was daily comfort to the nervous, unstrung, lonely woman, whom to suspect of trickery I began to think was worse than stupidity.

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

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

One day we were saddened by the confused wail of a lost spirit, who represented his agonies as greater than soul could bear, and clamored for relief. Moved to pity, I inquired:—

"What can we do for you?"

Unseen knuckles rapped back the touching answer:—

"Give me a piece of squash pie!"

I remarked to Miss Fellows that I supposed this to be a modern and improved version of the ancient drop of water which was to cool the tongue of Dives. She replied that it was the work of a mischievous spirit who had nothing better to do; they would not infrequently take in that way the reply from the lips of another. I am not sure whether we are to have lips in the spiritual world, but I think that was her expression.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I see it!" she said.

"See what?"

"A tall man wrapped in a sheet."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miss Fellows was inclined to fear that I had really endangered my life by this ghostly rendezvous. I can testify, however, that it was by no means "death to me," nor did I experience any ill effects from the event.

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

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

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

"Let me think awhile," he answered.

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

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

I made some inquiries which led to the discovery that there had been a Mr. Timothy Jabbers once the occupant of our house, that he had at one period been in business with my wife's father, that he was now many years dead, and that his nephews in New York were his heirs. We never attempted to bring any claim upon them, for three reasons: in the first place, because we knew we shouldn't get the money; in the second, because such a procedure would give so palpable an "object" in people's eyes for the disturbances at the house that we should, in all probability, lose the entire confidence of the entire non-spiritualistic community; thirdly, because I thought it problematical whether any constable of ordinary size and courage could be found who would undertake to summon the witness to testify in the county court at Atkinsville.

I mention the matter only because, on the theories of Spiritualism, it appeared to give some point and occasion to the phenomena, and their infesting that particular house.

Whether poor Mr. Timothy Jabbers felt relieved by having unburdened himself of his confession, I cannot state; but after he found that I paid some attention to his messages, he gradually ceased to express himself through turnips and cold keys; the rappings grew less violent and frequent, and finally ceased altogether. Shortly after that Miss Fellows went home.

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

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

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

"No trickery about the affair, then?"

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

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

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

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

"The Devil?"

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

"I tell you I never spoke more solemnly. I cannot, in the face of facts, ascribe all these phenomena to human agency. Something that comes we know not whence, and goes we know not whither, is at work there in the dark. I am driven to grant to it an extra-human power. Yet when that flabby Miss Fellows, in the trance state, undertakes to bring me messages from my dead wife, and when she attempts to recall the most tender memories of our life together, I cannot,"—he paused and turned his face a little away,—"it would be pleasant to think I had a word from Mary, but I cannot think she is there. I don't believe good spirits concern themselves with this thing. It has in its fair developments too much nonsense and too much positive sin; read a few numbers of the 'Banner,' or attend a convention or two, if you want to be convinced of that. If they 're not good spirits they're bad ones, that's all. I 've dipped into the subject in various ways since I have been here; consulted the mediums, talked with the prophets; I'm convinced that there is no dependence to be placed on the thing. You never learn anything from it that it is worth while to learn; above all, you never can trust its prophecies. It is evil,—evil at the root; and except by physicians and scientific men it had better be let alone. They may yet throw light on it; you and I cannot. I propose for myself to drop it henceforth. In fact, it looks too much toward putting one's self on terms of intimacy with the Prince of the Powers of the Air to please me."

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

The truth is, and it may be about time to own to it, that the three months' siege against the mystery, which I had held so pertinaciously that winter, had driven me to broad terms of capitulation. I assented to most of my friend's conclusions, but where he stopped I began a race for further light. I understood then, for the first time, the peculiar charm which I had often seen work so fatally with dabblers in Spiritualism. The fascination of the thing was upon me. I ransacked the papers for advertisements of mediums. I went from city to city at their mysterious calls. I held seances in my parlor, and frightened my wife with messages—some of them ghastly enough—from her dead relatives, I ran the usual gauntlet of strange seers in strange places, who told me my name, the names of all my friends, dead or alive, my secret aspirations and peculiar characteristics, my past history and future prospects.

For a long time they never made a failure. Absolute strangers told me facts about myself which not even my own wife knew: whether they spoke with the tongues of devils, or whether, by some unknown laws of magnetism, they simply read my thoughts, I am not even now prepared to say. I think if they had made a miss I should have been spared some suffering. Their communications had sometimes a ridiculous aimlessness, and occasionally a subtle deviltry coated about with religion, like a pill with sugar, but often a significant and fearful accuracy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How do you know it?"

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

"Who tells you?"

"Jerusha Babcock and George Washington."

Jerusha Babcock was the name of my maternal grandmother. What could the woman know of my maternal grandmother? It did not occur to me, I believe, to wonder what occasion George Washington could find to concern himself about my dying or my living. There stood the uncanny Jerusha as pledge that my informant knew what she was talking about. I left the office with an uneasy sinking at the heart. There was a coffin-store near by, and I remember the peculiar interest with which I studied the quilting of the satin lining, and the peculiar crawling sensation which crept to my fingers' ends.

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

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

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

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

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

"Why don't you come home?" my wife wrote in distress and perplexity. "You promised to come ten days ago, and they need you at the office, and I need you more than anybody."

"I need you more than anybody!" When the little clinging needs of three weeks grew into the great want of a lifetime,—O, how could I tell her what was coming?

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

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

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

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

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

Whether to believe those people, or whether to laugh at their predictions; whether to tell my wife, or whether to continue silent,—these questions tormented me through many wakeful nights and dreary days. My fears were in nowise allayed by a letter which' I received one day in January from Gertrude Fellows.

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

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

After receiving this last warning, certain uncomfortable words filed through my brain for days together:—

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

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

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

As the winter passed,—it seemed to me as if winter had never passed so rapidly before,—I found it natural to watch my health with the most careful scrutiny; to avoid improper food and undue excitement; to refrain from long and perilous journeys; to consider whether each new cook who entered the family might have occasion to poison me. It was an anomaly which I did not observe at the time, that while in my heart of hearts I expected to breathe my last upon the second of May, I yet cherished a distinct plan of fighting, cheating, persuading, or overmatching death.

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

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

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

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

It is, to say the least, an uncomfortable state of affairs when you find yourself drawing within a fortnight of the day on which seven people have assured you that, you are going to shuffle off this mortal coil. It is not agreeable to have no more idea than the dead (probably not as much) of the manner in which your demise is to be effected. It is not in all respects a cheerful mode of existence to dress yourself in the morning with the reflection that you are never to half wear out your new mottled coat, and that this striped neck-tie will be laid away by and by in a little box, and cried over by your wife; to hear your immediate acquaintances all wondering why you don't get yourself some new boots; to know that your partner has been heard to say that you are growing dull at trade; to find the children complaining that you have engaged no rooms yet at the beach; to look into their upturned eyes and wonder how long it is going to take for them to forget you; to go out after breakfast and wonder how many more times you will shut that front door; to come home in the perfumed dusk and see the faces pressed against the window to watch for you, and feel warm arms about your neck, and wonder how soon they will shrink from the chill of you; to feel the glow of the budding world, and think how blossom and fruit will crimson and drop without you, and wonder how the blossom and fruit of life can slip from you in the time of violet smells and orioles.

April, spattered with showers and dripped upon a little with ineffectual suns, slid restlessly away from me, and I locked my office door one night, reflecting that it was the night of the first of May, and that to-orrow was the second.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am confident that I ate more rapidly than is consistent with consummate elegance. I remember that Tip imitated me, and that Allis opened her eyes at me. I recall distinctly the fact that I had passed my plate a second time.

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

I sat with drawn breath and glared at it; at the relentless silver hands; at the fierce, and, as it seemed to me, living face of the Time on its top, who stooped and swung his scythe at me.

"I would like a very big white potato," said Tip, breaking the solemn silence.

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

* * * * *

I slowly turned my head. I resumed my spoon.

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

I finished my soup in silence.

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



"Little Tommy Tucker."



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

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

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

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

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

The merchant shot a careless glance over the top of his paper, at the sound of this petit dialogue, and the old lady smiled benignly; the man in the corner neither looked nor smiled.

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

A villain? O no, that is not the word. A brute? Not by any means. A man, weak, unfortunate, discouraged, and selfish, as weak, unfortunate, and discouraged people are apt to be; that was the amount of it. His panoramas never paid him for the use of his halls. His travelling tin-type saloon had trundled him into a sheriff's hands. His petroleum speculations had crashed like a bubble. His black and gold sign, J. Harmon, Photographer, had swung now for nearly a year over the dentist's rooms, and he had had the patronage of precisely six old women and three babies. He had drifted to the theatre in the evenings, he did not care now to remember how many times,—the fellows asked him, and it made him forget his troubles; the next morning his empty purse would gape at him, and Annie's mouth would quiver. A man must have his glass too, on Sundays, and—well, perhaps a little oftener. He had not always been fit to go to work after it; and Annie's mouth would quiver. It will be seen at once that it was exceedingly hard on a man that his wife's mouth should quiver. "Confound it! Why couldn't she scold or cry? These still women aggravated a fellow beyond reason."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We've lived and loved together,"

played Tommy in a little plaintive wail,

"We've lived and loved—"

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

"Through many changing years, Many changing years."

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

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

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

"There's no place like home,"

said Tommy's little fiddle,

"O, no place like home."

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

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

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

"Sweet, sweet home,"

played Tommy.

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

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

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

The sweet, loyal passion of the music—it would take worse playing than Tommy's to drive the sweet, loyal passion out of Annie Laurie—grew above the din of the train:—

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

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

"Gave me her promise true,"

hummed the little fiddle.

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

Ah, how Annie had kept it! The whole dark picture of her married years,—the days of work and pain, the nights of watching, the patient voice, the quivering mouth, the tact and the planning and the trust for to-morrow, the love that had borne all things, believed all things, hoped all things, uncomplaining,—rose into outline to tell him how she had kept it.

"Her face is as the fairest That e'er the sun shone on,"

suggested the little fiddle.

That it should be darkened forever, the sweet face! and that he should do it,—he, sitting here, with his ticket bought, bound for Colorado.

"And ne'er forget will I,"

murmured the little fiddle.

He would have knocked the man down who had told him twenty years ago that he ever should forget; that he should be here to-night, with his ticket bought, bound for Colorado.

But it was better for her to be free from him. He and his cursed ill-luck were a drag on her and the children, and would always be. What was that she had said once?

"Never mind, Jack, I can bear anything as long as I have you."

And here he was, with his ticket bought, bound for Colorado.

He wondered if it were ever too late in the day for a fellow to make a man of himself. He wondered—

"And she's a' the world to me, And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me down and dee,"

sang the little fiddle, triumphantly.

Harmon shook himself, and stood up. The train was slackening; the lights of a way-station bright ahead. It was about time for supper and his mother, so Tommy put down his fiddle and handed around his faded cap.

The merchant threw him a penny, and returned to his tax list. The old lady was fast asleep with her mouth open.

"Come here," growled Harmon, with his eyes very bright. Tommy shrank back, almost afraid of him.

"Come here," softening, "I won't hurt you. I tell you, boy, you don't know what you've done to-night."

"Done, sir?" Tommy couldn't help laughing, though there was a twinge of pain at his stout little heart, as he fingered the solitary penny in the faded cap. "Done? Well, I guess I've waked you up, sir, which was about what I meant to do."

"Yes, that is it," said Harmon, very distinctly, pushing up his hat, "you've waked me up. Here, hold your cap."

They had puffed into the station now, and stopped. He emptied his purse into the little cap, shook it clean of paper and copper alike, was out of the car and off the train before Tommy could have said Jack Robinson.

"My eyes!" gasped Tommy, "that chap had a ticket for New York, sure! Methuselah! Look a here! One, two, three,—must have been crazy; that's it, crazy."

"He'll never find out," muttered Harmon, turning away from the station lights, and striking back through the night for the red flats and home. "He'll never find out what he has done, nor, please God, shall she."

It was late when he came in sight of the house; it had been a long tramp across the tracks, and hard; he being stung by a bitter wind from the east all the way, tired with the monotonous treading of the sleepers, and with crouching in perilous niches to let the trains go by.

She stood watching at the window, as he had known that she would stand, her hands raised to her face, her figure cut out against the warm light of the room.

He stood still a moment and looked at her, hidden in the shadow of the street, thinking his own thoughts. The publican, in the old story, hardly entered the beautiful temple with more humble step than he his home that night.

She sprang to meet him, pale with her watching and fear.

"Worried, Annie, were you? I haven't been drinking; don't be frightened,—no, not the theatre, either, this time. Some business, dear; business that delayed me. I'm sorry you were worried, I am, Annie. I've had a long walk. It is pleasant here. I believe I'm tired, Annie."

He faltered, and turned away his face.

"Dear me," said Annie, "why, you poor fellow, you are all tired out. Sit right up here by the fire, and I will bring the coffee. I 've tried so hard not to let it boil away, you don't know, Jack, and I was so afraid something had happened to you."

Her face, her voice, her touch, seemed more than he could bear for a minute, perhaps. He gulped down his coffee, choking.

"Annie, look here." He put down his cup, trying to smile and make a jest of the words. "Suppose a fellow had it in him to be a rascal, and nobody ever knew it, eh?"

"I should rather not know it, if I were his wife," said Annie, simply.

"But you couldn't care anything more for him, you know, Annie?"

"I don't know," said Annie, shaking her head with a little perplexed smile, "you would be just Jack, any how."

Jack coughed, took up his coffee-cup, set it down hard, strode once or twice across the room, kissed the baby in the crib, kissed his wife, and sat down again, winking at the fire.

"I wonder if He had anything to do with sending him," he said, presently, under his breath.

"Sending whom?" asked puzzled Annie.

"Business, dear, just business. I was thinking of a boy who did a little job for me to-night, that's all."

And that is all that she knows to this day about the man sitting in the corner, with his hat over his eyes, bound for Colorado.



One of the Elect.



"Down, Muff! down!"

Muff obeyed; he took his paws off from his master's shoulders with an injured look in his great mute eyes, and consoled himself by growling at the cow. Mr. Ryck put a sudden stop to a series of gymnastic exercises commenced between them, by throwing the creature's hay down upon her horns; then he watered his horse, fed the sheep, took a look at the hens, and closed all the doors tightly; for the night was cold, so cold that he shivered, even under that great bottle-green coat of his: he was not a young man.

"Pretty cold night, Muff!" Muff was not blest with a forgiving disposition; he maintained a dignified silence. But his master did not feel the slight. Something, perhaps the cold, made him careless of the dog to-night.

The house was warm, at least; the light streamed far out of the kitchen window, down almost to the orchard. He passed across it, showing his figure a little stooping, and the flutter of gray hair from under his hat; then into the house. His wife was busied about the room, a pleasant room for a kitchen, with the cleanest of polished floors and whitened tables; the cheeriest of fires, the home-like faces of blue and white china peeping through the closet door; a few books upon a little shelf, with an old Bible among them; the cosey rocking-chair that always stood by the fire, and a plant or two in the south window. He came in, stamping off the snow; Muff crawled behind the stove, and gave himself up to a fit of metaphysics.

"Cold, Amos?"

"Of course. What else should I be, woman?"

His wife made no reply. His unusual impatience only saddened her eyes a little. She was one of those women who would have borne a life-long oppression with dumb lips. Amos Ryck was not an unkind husband, but it was not his way to be tender; the years which had whitened his hair had brought him stern experiences: life was to him a battle, his horizon always that about a combatant. But he loved her.

"Most ready to sit down, Martha?" he said at last, more gently.

"In a minute, Amos."

She finished some bit of evening work, her step soft about the room. Then she drew up the low rocking-chair with its covering of faded crimson chintz, and sat down by her husband.

She did this without noise; she did not sit too near to him; she took pains not to annoy him by any feminine bustle over her work; she chose her knitting, as being always most to his fancy; then she looked up timidly into his face. But there was a frown, slight to be sure, but still a frown, upon it, neither did he speak. Some gloomy, perhaps some bitter thought held the man. A reflection of it might have struck across her, as she turned her head, fixing her eyes upon the coals.

The light on her face showed it pale; the lines on her mouth were deeper than any time had worn for her husband; her hair as gray as his, though he was already a man of grave, middle age, when the little wife—hardly past her sixteenth birthday—came to the farm with him.

Perhaps it is these silent women—spiritless, timid souls, like this one,—who have, after all, the greatest capacity for suffering. You might have thought so, if you had watched her. Some infinite mourning looked out of her mute brown eyes. In the very folding of her hands there was a sort of stifled cry, as one whose abiding place is in the Valley of the Shadow.

A monotonous sob of the wind broke at the corners of the house; in the silence between the two, it was distinctly heard. Martha Ryck's face paled a little.

"I wish—" She tried to laugh. "Amos, it cries just like a baby."

"Nonsense!"

Her husband rose impatiently, and walked to the window. He was not given to fancies; all his life was ruled and squared up to a creed. Yet I doubt if he liked the sound of that wind much better than the woman. He thrummed upon the window-sill, then turned sharply away.

"There's a storm up, a cold one too."

"It stormed when—"

But Mrs. Ryck did not finish her sentence. Her husband, coming back to his seat, tripped over a stool,—a little thing it was, fit only for a child; a bit of dingy carpet covered it: once it had been bright.

"Martha, what do you keep this about for? It's always in the way!" setting it up angrily against the wall.

"I won't, if you'd rather not, Amos."

The farmer took up an almanac, and counted out the time when the minister's salary and the butcher's bill were due; it gave occasion for making no reply.

"Amos!" she said at last. He put down his book.

"Amos, do you remember what day it is?"

"I'm not likely to forget." His face darkened.

"Amos," again, more timidly, "do you suppose we shall ever find out?"

"How can I tell?"

"Ever know anything,—just a little?"

"We know enough, Martha."

"Amos! Amos!" her voice rising to a bitter cry, "we don't know enough! God's the only one that knows enough. He knows whether she's alive, and if she's dead he knows, and where she is; if there was ever any hope, and if her mother—"

"Hope, Martha, for her!"

She had been looking into the fire, her attitude unchanged, her hands wrung one into the other. She roused at that, something in her face as if one flared a sudden light upon the dead.

"What ails you, Amos? You're her father; you loved her when she was a little, innocent child."

When she was a child, and innocent,—yes. That was long ago. He stopped his walk across the room, and sat down, his face twitching nervously. But he had nothing to say,—not one word to the patient woman watching him there in the firelight, not one for love of the child who had climbed upon his knee and kissed him in that very room, who had played upon that little faded cricket, and wound her arms about the mother's neck, sitting just so, as she sat now. Yet he had loved her, the pure baby. That stung him. He could not forget it, though he might own no fathership to the wanderer.

Amos Ryck was a respectable man; he had the reputation of an honest, pious farmer to maintain. Moreover, he was a deacon in the church. His own life, stern in its purity, could brook no tenderness toward offenders. His own child was as shut out from his forgiveness as he deemed her to be from the forgiveness of his God. Yet you would have seen, in one look at the man, that this blow with which he was smitten had cleft his heart to its core.

This was her birthday,—hers whose name had not passed his lips for years. Do you think he had once forgotten it since its morning? Did not the memories it brought crowd into every moment? Did they not fill the very prayers in which he besought a sin-hating God to avenge him of all his enemies?

So many times the child had sat there at his feet on this day, playing with some birthday toy,—he always managed to find her something, a doll or a picture-book; she used to come up to thank him, pushing back her curls, her little red lips put up for a kiss. He was very proud of her,—he and the mother. She was all they had,—the only one. He used to call her "God's dear blessing," softly, while his eyes grew dim; she hardly heard him for his breaking voice.

She might have stood there and brought back all those dead birthday nights, so did he live them over. But none could know it; for he did not speak, and the frown knotted darkly on his forehead. Martha Ryck looked up at last into her husband's face.

"Amos, if she should ever come back!" He started, his eyes freezing.

"She won't! She—"

Would he have said "she shall not?" God only knew.

"Martha, you talk nonsense! It's just like a woman. We've said enough about this. I suppose He who's cursed us has got his own reasons for it. We must bear it, and so must she."

He stood up, stroking his beard nervously, his eyes wandering about the room; he did not, or he could not, look at his wife. Muff, rousing from his slumbers, came up sleepily to be taken some notice of. She used to love the dog,—the child; she gave him his name in a frolic one day; he was always her playfellow; many a time they had come in and found her asleep with Muff's black, shaggy sides for a pillow, and her little pink arms around his neck, her face warm and bright with some happy dream.

Mr. Ryck had often thought he would sell the creature; but he never had. If he had been a woman, he would have said he could not. Being a man, he argued that Muff was a good watch-dog, and worth keeping.

"Always in the way, Muff!" he muttered, looking at the patient black head rubbed against his knee. He was angry with the dog at that moment; the next he had repented; the brute had done no wrong. He stooped and patted him. Muff returned to his dreams content.

"Well, Martha," he said, coming up to her uneasily, "you look tired."

"Tired? No, I was only thinking, Amos."

The pallor of her face, its timid eyes and patient mouth, the whole crushed look of the woman, struck him freshly. He stooped and kissed her forehead, the sharp lines of his face relaxing a little.

"I didn't mean to be hard on you, Martha; we both have enough to bear without that, but it's best not to talk of what can't be helped,—you see."

"Yes."

"Don't think anything more about the day; it's not—it's not really good for you; you must cheer up, little woman."

"Yes, Amos."

Perhaps his unusual tenderness gave her courage; she stood up, putting both arms around his neck.

"If you'd only try to love her a little, after all, my husband! He would know it; He might save her for it."

Amos Ryck choked, coughed, and said it was time for prayers. He took down the old Bible in which his child's baby-fingers used to trace their first lessons after his own, and read, not of her who loved much and was forgiven, but one of the imprecatory Psalms.

When Mrs. Ryck was sure that her husband was asleep that night, she rose softly from her bed, unlocked, with noiseless key, one of her bureau drawers, took something from it, and then felt her way down the dark stairs into the kitchen.

She drew a chair up to the fire, wrapped her shawl closely about her, and untied, with trembling fingers, the knots of a soft silken handkerchief in which her treasures were folded.

Some baby dresses of purest white; a child's little pink apron; a pair of tiny shoes, worn through by pattering feet; and a toy or two all broken, as some impatient little fingers had left them; she was such a careless baby! Yet they never could scold her, she always affected such pretty surprises, and wide blue-eyed penitence: a bit of a queen she was at the farm.

Was it not most kindly ordered by the Infinite Tenderness which pitieth its sorrowing ones, that into her still hours her child should come so often only as a child, speaking pure things only, touching her mother so like a restful hand, and stealing into a prayer?

For where was ever grief like this one? Beside this sorrow, death was but a joy. If she might have closed her child's baby-eyes, and seen the lips which had not uttered their first "Mother!" stilled, and laid her away under the daisies, she would have sat there alone that night, and thanked Him who had given and taken away.

But this,—a wanderer upon the face of the earth,—a mark, deeper seared than the mark of Cain, upon the face which she had fondled and kissed within her arms; the soul to which she had given life, accursed of God and man,—to measure this, there is no speech nor language.

Martha Ryck rose at last, took off the covers of the stove, and made a fresh blaze which brightened all the room, and shot its glow far into the street. She went to the window to push the curtain carefully aside, stood a moment looking out into the night, stole softly to the door, unlocked it, then went upstairs to bed.

The wind, rising suddenly that night, struck sharply through the city. It had been cold enough before, but the threatened storm foreboded that it would be worse yet before morning. The people crowded in a warm and brilliant church cast wandering glances from the preacher to the painted windows, beyond which the night lay darkly, thought of the ride home in close, cushioned carriages, and shivered.

So did a woman outside, stopping just by the door, and looking in at the hushed and sacred shelter. Such a temperature was not the best medicine for that cough of hers. She had just crawled out of the garret, where she had lain sick, very sick, for weeks.

Passing the door of the Temple which reared its massive front and glittering windows out of the darkness of the street, her ear was caught by the faint, muffled sound of some anthem the choir were singing. She drew the hood of her cloak over her face, turned into the shadow of the steps, and, standing so, listened. Why, she hardly knew. Perhaps it was the mere entreaty of the music, for her dulled ear had never grown deaf to it; or perhaps a memory, flitting as a shadow, of other places and other times, in which the hymns of God's church had not been strange to her. She caught the words at last, brokenly. They were of some one who was wounded. Wounded! she held her breath, listening curiously. The wind shrieking past drowned the rest; only the swelling of the organ murmured above it. She stole up the granite steps just within the entrance. No one was there to see her, and she went on tiptoe to the muffled door, putting her ear to it, her hair falling over her face. It was some plaintive minor air they were hymning, as sad as a dying wail, and as sweet as a mother's lullaby.

"But He was wounded; He was wounded for our transgression; He was bruised for our iniquities."

Then, growing slower and more faint, a single voice took up the strain, mournfully but clearly, with a hush in it as if one sang on Calvary.

"Yet we hid, as it were, our faces from Him. He was despised, and we esteemed him not."

Well; He only knows what it spoke to the woman, who listened with her guilty face hidden in her hair; how it drew her like a call to join the throng that worshipped him.

"I'd like to hear the rest," she muttered to herself. "I wonder what it is about."

A child came down from the gallery just then, a ragged boy, who, like herself, had wandered in from the street.

"Hilloa, Meg!" he said, laughing, "you going to meeting? That's a good joke!" If she had heard him, she would have turned away. But her hand was on the latch; the door had swung upon its noiseless hinges; the pealing organ drowned his voice. She went in and sat down in an empty slip close by the door, looking about her for the moment in a sort of childish wonder. The church was a blaze of light and color. One perceived a mist of gayly dressed people, a soft flutter of fans, and faint, sweet perfumes below; the velvet-cushioned pulpit, and pale, scholarly outlines of the preacher's face above; the warmth of rainbow-tinted glass; the wreathed and massive carving of oaken cornice; the glitter of gas-light from a thousand prisms, and the silence of the dome beyond.

The brightness struck sharply against the woman sitting there alone. Her face seemed to grow grayer and harder in it. The very hush of that princely sanctuary seemed broken by her polluted presence. True, she kept afar off; she did not so much as lift up her eyes to heaven; she had but stolen in to hear the chanted words that were meant for the acceptance and the comfort of the pure, bright worshippers,—sinners, to be sure, in their way; but then, Christ died for them. This tabernacle, to which they had brought their purple and gold and scarlet, for his praise, was not meant for such as Meg, you know.

But she had come into it, nevertheless. If He had called her there, she did not know it. She only sat and listened to the chanting, forgetting what she was; forgetting to wonder if there were one of all that reverent throng who would be willing to sit and worship beside her.

The singing ended at last, and the pale preacher began his sermon. But Meg did not care for that; she could not understand it. She crouched down in the corner of the pew, her hood drawn far over her face, repeating to herself now and then, mechanically as it seemed, the words of the chant.

"Wounded—for our transgressions; and bruised,"—muttering, after a while,—"Yet we hid our faces." Bruised and wounded! The sound of the words attracted her; she said them over and over. She knew who He was. Many years ago she had heard of him; it was a great while since then; she had almost forgotten it. Was it true? And was he perhaps,—was there a little chance it meant, he was bruised for her,—for her? She began to wonder dimly, still muttering the sorrowful words down in her corner, where no one could hear her.

I wonder if He heard them. Do you think he did? For when the sermon was ended, and the choir sang again,—still of him, and how he called the heavy-laden, and how he kept his own rest for them, she said,—for was she not very weary and heavy-laden with her sins?—still crouching down in her corner, "That's me. I guess it is. I'll find out."

She fixed her eyes upon the preacher, thinking, in her stunted, childish way, that he knew so much, so many things she did not understand, that surely he could tell her,—she should like to have it to think about; she would ask him. She rose instinctively with the audience to receive his blessing, then waited in her hooded cloak, like some dark and evil thing, among the brilliant crowd. The door opening, as they began to pass out by her, swept in such a chill of air as brought back a spasm of coughing. She stood quivering under it, her face livid with the pain. The crowd began to look at her curiously, to nod and whisper among themselves.

The sexton stepped up nervously; he knew who she was. "Meg, you'd better go. What are you standing here for?"

She flung him a look out of her hard, defiant eyes; she made no answer. A child, clinging to her mother's hand, looked up as she went by, pity and fear in her great wondering eyes. "Mother, see that poor woman; she's hungry or cold!"

The little one put her hand over the slip, pulling at Meg's cloak, "What's the matter with you? Why don't you go home?"

"Bertha, child, are you crazy?" Her mother caught her quickly away. "Don't touch that woman!"

Meg heard it.

Standing, a moment after, just at the edge of the aisle, a lady, clad in velvet, brushed against her, then gathered her costly garments with a hand ringed and dazzling with diamonds, shrinking as if she had touched some accursed thing, and sweeping by.

Meg's eyes froze at that. This was the sanctuary, these the worshippers of Him who was bruised. His message could not be for her. It would be of no use to find out about him; of no use to tell him how she loathed herself and her life; that she wanted to know about that Rest, and about that heavy-laden one. His followers would not brook the very flutter of her dress against their pure garments. They were like him; he could have nothing to say to such as she.

She turned to go out. Through the open door she saw the night and the storm. Within was the silent dome, and the organ-hymn still swelling up to it.

It was still of the wounded that they sang. Meg listened, lingered, touched the preacher on the arm as he came by.

"I want to ask you a question."

He started at the sight of her, or more perhaps at the sharpness in her voice.

"Why, why, who are you?"

"I'm Meg. You don't know me. I ain't fit for your fine Christian people to touch; they won't let their little children speak to me."

"Well?" he said, nervously, for she paused.

"Well? You're a preacher. I want to know about Him they've been singing of, I came in to hear the singing. I like it."

"I—I don't quite understand you," began the minister. "You surely have heard of Jesus Christ."

"Yes," her eyes softened, "somebody used to tell me; it was mother; we lived in the country. I wasn't what I am now. I want to know if he can put me back again. What if I should tell him I was going to be different? Would he hear me, do you suppose?"

Somehow the preacher's scholarly self-possession failed him. He felt ill at ease, standing there with the woman's fixed black eyes upon him.

"Why, yes; he always forgives a repentant sinner."

"Repentant sinner." She repeated the words musingly. "I don't understand all these things. I've forgotten most all about it. I want to know. Couldn't I come in some way with the children and be learnt 'em? I wouldn't make any trouble."

There was something almost like a child in her voice just then, almost as earnest and as pure. The preacher took out his handkerchief and wiped his face; then he changed his hat awkwardly from hand to hand.

"Why, why, really, we have no provision in our Sabbath school for cases like this: we have been meaning to establish an institution of a missionary character, but the funds cannot be raised just yet. I am sorry; I don't know but—"

"It's no matter!"

Meg turned sharply away, her hands dropping lifelessly; she moved toward the door. They were alone now in the church, they two.

The minister's pale cheek flushed; he stepped after her.

"Young woman!"

She stopped, her face turned from him.

"I will send you to some of the city missionaries, or I will go with you to the Penitents' Retreat. I should like to help you. I—"

He would have exhorted her to reform as kindly as he knew how; he felt uncomfortable at letting her go so; he remembered just then who washed the feet of his Master with her tears. But she would not listen. She turned from him, and out into the storm, some cry on her lips,—it might have been:—

"There ain't nobody to help me. I was going to be better!"

She sank down on the snow outside, exhausted by the racking cough which the air had again brought on.

The sexton found her there in the shadow, when he locked the church doors.

"Meg! you here? What ails you?"

"Dying, I suppose!"

The sight of her touched the man, she lying there alone in the snow; he lingered, hesitated, thought of his own warm home, looked at her again. If a friendly hand should save the creature,—he had heard of such things. Well? But how could he take her into his respectable home? What would people say?—the sexton of the Temple! He had a little wife there too, pure as the snow upon the ground to-night. Could he bring them under the same roof?

"Meg!" he said, speaking in his nervous way, though kindly, "you will die here. I'll call the police and let them take you where it's warmer."

But she crawled to her feet again.

"No you won't!"

She walked away as fast as she was able, till she found a still place down by the water, where no one could see her. There she stood a moment irresolute, looked up through the storm as if searching for the sky, then sank upon her knees down in the silent shade of some timber.

Perhaps she was half-frightened at the act, for she knelt so a moment without speaking. There she began to mutter: "Maybe He won't drive me off; if they did, maybe he won't. I should just like to tell him, anyway!"

So she folded her hands, as she had folded them once at her mother's knee.

"O Lord! I'm tired of being Meg. I should like to be something else!"

Then she rose, crossed the bridge, and on past the thinning houses, walking feebly through the snow that drifted against her feet.

She did not know why she was there, or where she was going. She repeated softly to herself now and then the words uttered down in the shade of the timber, her brain dulled by the cold, faint, floating dreams stealing into them.

Meg! tired of being Meg! She wasn't always that. It was another name, a pretty name she thought, with a childish smile,—Maggie. They always call her that. She used to play about among the clover-blossoms and buttercups then; the pure little children used to kiss her; nobody hooted after her in the street, or drove her out of church, or left her all alone out in the snow,—Maggie!

Perhaps, too, some vague thought came to her of the mournful, unconscious prophecy of the name, as the touch of the sacred water upon her baby-brow had sealed it,—Magdalene.

She stopped a moment, weakened by her toiling against the wind, threw off her hood, the better to catch her laboring breath, and standing so, looked back at the city, its lights glimmering white and pale, through the falling snow.

Her face was a piteous sight just then. Do you think the haughtiest of the pure, fair women in yonder treasured homes could have loathed her as she loathed herself at that moment?

Yet it might have been a face as fair and pure as theirs; kisses of mother and husband might have warmed those drawn and hueless lips; they might have prayed their happy prayers, every night and morning, to God. It might have been. You would almost have thought he had meant it should be so, if you had looked into her eyes sometimes,—perhaps when she was on her knees by the timber; or when she listened to the chant, crouching out of sight in the church.

Well, it was only that it might have been. Life could hold no possible blessed change for her, you know. Society had no place for it, though she sought it carefully with tears. Who of all God's happy children that he had kept from sin would have gone to her and said, "My sister, his love holds room for you and me"; have touched her with her woman's hand, held out to her her woman's help, and blessed her with her woman's prayers and tears?

Do you not think Meg knew the answer? Had she not learned it well, in seven wandering years? Had she not read it in every blast of this bitter night, out into which she had come to find a helper, when all the happy world passed by her, on the other side?

She stood there, looking at the glittering of the city, then off into the gloom where the path lay through the snow. Some struggle was in her face.

"Home! home and mother! She don't want me,—nobody wants me. I'd better go back."

The storm was beating upon her. But, looking from the city to the drifted path, and back from the lonely path to the lighted city, she did not stir.

"I should like to see it, just to look in the window, a little,—it wouldn't hurt 'em any. Nobody'd know."

She turned, walking slowly where the snow lay pure and untrodden. On, out of sight of the town, where the fields were still; thinking only as she went, that nobody would know,—nobody would know.

She would see the old home out in the dark; she could even say good-by to it quite aloud, and they wouldn't hear her, or come and drive her away. And then—

She looked around where the great shadows lay upon the fields, felt the weakening of her limbs, her failing breath, and smiled. Not Meg's smile; a very quiet smile, with a little quiver in it. She would find a still place under the trees somewhere; the snow would cover her quite out of sight before morning,—the pure, white snow. She would be only Maggie then.

The road, like some familiar dream, wound at last into the village. Down the street where her childish feet had pattered in their playing, by the old town pump, where, coming home from school, she used to drink the cool, clear water on summer noons, she passed,—a silent shadow. She might have been the ghost of some dead life, so moveless was her face. She stopped at last, looking about her.

"Where? I most forget."

Turning out from the road, she found a brook half hidden under the branches of a dripping tree,—frozen now; only a black glare of ice, where she pushed away the snow with her foot. It might have been a still, green place in summer, with banks of moss, and birds singing overhead. Some faint color flushed all her face; she did not hear the icicles dropping from the lonely tree.

"Yes,"—she began to talk softly to herself,—"this is it. The first time I ever saw him, he stood over there under the tree. Let me see; wasn't I crossing the brook? Yes, I was crossing the brook; on the stones. I had a pink dress. I looked in the glass when I went home," brushing her soft hair out of her eyes. "Did I look pretty? I can't remember. It's a great while ago."

She came back into the street after that, languidly, for the snow lay deeper. The wind, too, had chilled her more than she knew. The sleet was frozen upon her mute, white face. She tried to draw her cloak more closely about her, but her hands refused to hold it. She looked at them curiously.

"Numb? How much farther, I wonder?"

It was not long before she came to it. The house stood up silently in the night. A single light glimmered far out upon the garden. Her eye caught it eagerly. She followed it down, across the orchard, and the little plats where the flowers used to be so bright all summer long. She had not forgotten them. She used to go out in the morning and pick them for her mother,—a whole apronful, purple, and pink, and white, with dewdrops on them. She was fit to touch them then. Her mother used to smile when she brought them in. Her mother! Nobody ever smiled so since. Did she know it? Did she ever wonder what had become of her,—the little girl who used to kiss her? Did she ever want to see her? Sometimes, when she prayed up in the old bedroom, did she remember her daughter who had sinned, or guess that she was tired of it all, and how no one in all the wide world would help her?

She was sleeping there now. And the father. She was afraid to see him; he would send her away, if he knew she had come out in the snow to look at the old home. She wondered if her mother would.

She opened the gate, and went in. The house was very still. So was the yard, and the gleam of light that lay golden on the snow. The numbness of her body began to steal over her brain. She thought at moments, as she crawled up the path upon her hands and knees,—for she could no longer walk,—that she was dreaming some pleasant dream; that the door would open, and her mother come out to meet her. Attracted like a child by the broad belt of light, she followed it over and through a piling drift. It led her to the window where the curtain was pushed aside. She managed to reach the blind, and so stand up a moment, clinging to it, looking in, the glow from the fire sharp on her face. Then she sank down upon the snow by the door.

Lying so, her face turned up against it, her stiffened lips kissing the very dumb, unanswering wood, a thought came to her. She remembered the day. For seven long years she had not thought of it.

A spasm crossed her face, her hands falling clinched. Who was it of whom it was written, that better were it for that man if he had never been born? Of Magdalene, more vile than Judas, what should be said?

Yet it was hard, I think, to fall so upon the very threshold,—so near the quiet, peaceful room, with the warmth, and light, and rest; to stay all night in the storm, with eyes turned to that dead, pitiless sky, without one look into her mother's face, without one kiss, or gentle touch, or blessing, and die so, looking up! No one to hold her hand and look into her eyes, and hear her say she was sorry,—sorry for it all! That they should find her there in the morning, when her poor, dead face could not see if she were forgiven!

"I should like to go in," sobbing, with the first tears of many years upon her cheek,—weak, pitiful tears, like a child's,—"just in out of the cold!"

Some sudden strength fell on her after that. She reached up, fumbling for the latch. It opened at her first touch; the door swung wide into the silent house.