Rose flushed all over her little eager face and her thin neck. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then shut it with a catch of her breath.

"I can't imagine how it got out," repeated Charlotte.

Rose looked at Charlotte with a painful effort; she clutched her hands tightly into fists as she spoke. "I was coming up here 'cross lots last night, and I heard you out in the road calling Barney," she said, as if she forced out the words.

"Rose Berry, you didn't tell!"

"I went home and told mother, that's all. I didn't think that it would do any harm, Charlotte."

"It'll be all over town, that's all. It's bad enough, anyway."

"I don't believe it'll get out; I told mother not to tell."

"Mrs. Thayer knew."

"Maybe Barney told her."

"Rose Berry, you know better. You know Barney wouldn't do such a thing."

"No; I don't s'pose he would."

"Don't suppose! Don't you know?"

"Yes, of course I do. I know Barney just as well as you do, Charlotte. Oh, Charlotte, don't feel bad. I wouldn't have told mother if I'd thought. I didn't mean to do any harm. I was all upset myself by it. Don't cry, Charlotte."

"I ain't going to cry," said Charlotte, with spirit. "I've stopped cryin'." She wiped her eyes forcibly with her apron, and gave her head a proud toss. "I know you didn't mean to do any harm, Rose, and I suppose it would have got out anyway. 'Most everything does get out but good deeds."

"I truly didn't mean to do any harm, Charlotte," Rose repeated.

"I know you didn't. We won't say any more about it."

"I was just running over across lots last night," Rose said. "I supposed you'd be in the front room with Barney, but I thought I'd see Aunt Sarah. I'd got terrible lonesome; mother had gone to sleep in her chair, and father had gone to bed. When I got out by the stone-wall next the wood I heard you; then I ran right back. Don't you—suppose he'll ever come again, Charlotte?"

"No," said Charlotte.

"Oh, Charlotte!" There was a curious quality in the girl's voice, as if some great hidden emotion in her heart tried to leap to the surface and make a sound, although it was totally at variance with the import of her cry. Charlotte started, without knowing why. It was as if Rose's words and her tone had different meanings, and conflicted like the wrong lines with a tune.

"I gave it up last night," said Charlotte. "It's all over. I'm goin' to pack my wedding things away."

"I don't see what makes you so sure."

"I know him."

"But I don't see what you've done, Charlotte; he didn't quarrel with you."

"That don't make any odds. He can't get married to me now without he breaks his will, and he can't. He can't get outside himself enough to break it. I've studied it all out. It's like ciphering. It's all over."

"Charlotte."

"What is it?"

"Why—couldn't you go somewhere else to get married? What's the need of his comin' here, if he's been ordered out, and he's said he wouldn't?"

"That's just the letter of it," returned Charlotte, scornfully. "Do you suppose he could cheat himself that way, or I'd have him if he could? When Barney Thayer went out of this house last night, and said what he did, he meant that it was all over, that he was never going to marry me, nor have anything more to do with us, and he's going to stand by it. I am not finding any fault with him. I've made up my mind that it's all over, and I'm going to pack away my weddin' things."

"Oh, Charlotte, you take it so calm!"

"What do you want me to do?"

"If it was anybody else, I should think they didn't care."

"Maybe I don't."

"I couldn't bear it so, anyhow! I couldn't!" Rose cried out, with sudden passion. "I wouldn't bear it. I'd go down on my knees to him to come back!" Rose flung back her head and looked at Charlotte with a curious defiance; her face grew suddenly intense, and seemed to open out into bloom and color like a flower. The pupils of her blue eyes dilated until they looked black; her thin lips looked full and red; her cheeks were flaming; her slender chest heaved. "I would," said she; "I don't care, I would."

Charlotte looked at her, and a quivering flush like a reflection was left on her fair, steady face.

"I would," said Rose again.

"It wouldn't do any good."

"It would if he cared anything about you."

"It would if he could give up to the care. Barney Thayer has got a terrible will that won't always let him do what he wants to himself."

"I don't believe he's enough of a fool to put his own eyes out."

"You don't know him."

"I'd try, anyway."

"It wouldn't do any good."

"I don't believe you care anything about him, Charlotte Barnard!" Rose cried out. "If you did, you couldn't give him up so easy for such a silly thing. You sit there just as calm. I don't believe but what you'll have another fellow on the string in a month. I know one that's dying to get you."

"Maybe I shall," replied Charlotte.

"Won't you, now?" Rose tried to speak archly, but her eyes were fiercely eager.

"I can't tell till I get home from the grave," said Charlotte. "You might wait till I did, Rose." She got up and went to dusting her bureau and the little gilt-framed mirror behind it. Her lips were shut tightly, and she never looked at her cousin.

"Now don't get mad, Charlotte," Rose said. "Maybe I ought not to have spoken so, but it did seem to me you couldn't care as much— It does seem to me I couldn't settle down and be so calm if I was in your place, and all ready to be married to anybody. I should want to do something."

"I should, if there was anything to do," said Charlotte. She stopped dusting and leaned against the wall, reflecting. "I wish it was a real mountain to move," said she; "I'd do it."

"I'd go right down in the field where he is ploughing, and I'd make him say he'd come to see me to-night."

"I called him back last night—you heard me," said Charlotte, with slow bitterness. Her square delicate chin dipped into the muslin folds of her neckerchief; she looked steadily at the floor and bent her brow.

"I'd call him again."

"You would, would you?" cried Charlotte, straightening herself. "You would stand out in the road and keep on calling a man who wouldn't even turn his head? You'd keep on calling, and let all the town hear?"

"Yes, I would. I would! I wouldn't be ashamed of anything if I was going to marry him. I'd go on my knees before him in the face and eyes of the whole town."

"Well, I wouldn't," said Charlotte.

"I would, if I was sure he thought as much of me as I did of him."

Charlotte looked at her proudly. "I'm sure enough of that," said she.

Rose winced a little. "Then I wouldn't mind what I did," she persisted, stubbornly.

"Well, I would," said Charlotte; "but maybe I don't care. Maybe all this isn't as hard for me as it would be for another girl." Charlotte's voice broke, but she tossed her head back with a proud motion; she took up the dusting-cloth and fell to work again.

"Oh, Charlotte!" said Rose; "I didn't mean that. Of course I know you care. It's awful. It was only because I didn't see how you could seem so calm; it ain't like me. Of course I know you feel bad enough underneath. Your wedding-clothes all done and everything. They are pretty near all done, ain't they, Charlotte?"

"Yes," said Charlotte. "They're—pretty near—done." She tried to speak steadily, but her voice failed. Suddenly she threw herself on the bed and hid her face, and her whole body heaved and twisted with great sobs.

"Oh, poor Charlotte, don't!" Rose cried, wringing her own hands; her face quivered, but she did not weep.

"Maybe I don't care," sobbed Charlotte; "maybe—I don't care."

"Oh, Charlotte!" Rose looked at Charlotte's piteous girlish shoulders shaken with sobs, and the fair prostrate girlish head. Charlotte all drawn up in this little heap upon the bed looked very young and helpless. All her womanly stateliness, which made her seem so superior to Rose, had vanished. Rose pulled her chair close to the bed, sat down, and laid her little thin hand on Charlotte's arm, and Charlotte directly felt it hot through her sleeve. "Don't, Charlotte," Rose said; "I'm sorry I spoke so."

"Maybe I don't care," Charlotte sobbed out again. "Maybe I don't."

"Oh, Charlotte, I'm sorry," Rose said, trembling. "I do know you care; don't you feel so bad because I said that."

Rose tightened her grasp on Charlotte's arm; her voice changed suddenly. "Look here, Charlotte," said she, "I'll do anything in the world I can to help you; I promise you that, and I mean it, honest."

Charlotte reached around a hand, and clasped her cousin's.

"I'm sorry I spoke so," Rose said.

"Never mind," Charlotte responded, chokingly. She sobbed a little longer from pure inertia of grief; then she raised herself, shaking off Rose's hand. "It's all right," said she; "I needn't have minded; I know you didn't mean anything. It was just—the last straw, and—when you said that about my wedding-clothes—"

"Oh, Charlotte, you did speak about them yourself first," Rose said, deprecatingly.

"I did, so nobody else would," returned Charlotte. She wiped her eyes, drooping her stained face away from her cousin with a kind of helpless shame; then she smoothed her hair with the palms of her hands. "I know you didn't mean any harm, Rose," she added, presently. "I got my silk dress done last Wednesday; I wanted to tell you." Charlotte tried to smile at Rose with her poor swollen lips and her reddened eyes.

"I'm sorry I said anything," Rose repeated; "I ought to have known it would make you feel bad, Charlotte."

"No, you hadn't. I was terrible silly. Don't you want to see my dress, Rose?"

"Oh, Charlotte! you don't want to show it to me?"

"Yes, I do. I want you to see it—before I pack it away. It's in the north chamber."

Rose followed Charlotte out of the room across the passageway to the north chamber. Charlotte had had one brother, who had died some ten years before, when he was twenty. The north chamber had been his room, the bureau drawers were packed with his clothes, and the silk hat which had been the pride of his early manhood hung on the nail where he had left it, and also his Sunday coat. His mother would not have them removed, but kept them there, with frequent brushings, to guard against dust and moths.

Always when Charlotte entered this small long room, which was full of wavering lines from its uneven floor and walls and ceiling and the long arabesques on its old blue-and-white paper, whose green paper curtains with fringed white dimity ones drooping over them were always drawn, and in summertime when the windows were open undulated in the wind, she had the sense of a presence, dim, but as positive as the visions she had used to have of faces in the wandering design of the old wall-paper when she had studied it in her childhood. Ever since her brother's death she had had this sense of his presence in his room; now she thought no more of it than of any familiar figure. All the grief at his death had vanished, but she never entered his old room that the thought of him did not rise up before her and stay with her while she remained.

Now, when she opened the door, and the opposite green and white curtains flew out in the draught towards her, they were no more evident than this presence to which she now gave no thought, and pushed by her brother's memory without a glance.

Rose followed her to the bed. A white linen sheet was laid over the chintz counterpane. Charlotte lifted the sheet.

"I took the last stitch on it Wednesday night," she said, in a hushed voice.

"Didn't he come that night?"

"I finished it before he came."

"Did he see it?"

Charlotte nodded. The two girls stood looking solemnly at the silk dress.

"You can't see it here; it's too dark," said Charlotte, and she rolled up a window curtain.

"Yes, I can see better," said Rose, in a whisper. "It's beautiful, Charlotte."

The dress was spread widely over the bed in crisp folds. It was purple, plaided vaguely with cloudy lines of white and delicate rose-color. Over it lay a silvery lustre that was the very light of the silken fabric.

Rose felt it reverently. "How thick it is!" said she.

"Yes, it's a good piece," Charlotte replied.

"You thought you'd have purple?"

"Yes, he liked it."

"Well, it's pretty, and it's becoming to you."

Charlotte took up the skirt, and slipped it, loud with silken whispers, over her head. It swept out around her in a great circle; she looked like a gorgeous inverted bell-flower.

"It's beautiful," Rose said.

Charlotte's face, gazing downward at the silken breadths, had quite its natural expression. It was as if her mind in spite of herself would stop at old doors.

"Try on the waist," pleaded Rose.

Charlotte slipped off her calico waist, and thrust her firm white arms into the flaring silken sleeves of the wedding-gown. Her neck arose from it with a grand curve. She stood before the glass and strained the buttons together, frowning importantly.

"It fits you like a glove," Rose murmured, admiringly, smoothing Charlotte's glossy back.

"I've got a spencer-cape to wear over my neck to meeting," Charlotte said, and she opened the upper-most drawer in the chest and took out a worked muslin cape, and adjusted it carefully over her shoulders, pinning it across her bosom with a little brooch of her brother's hair in a rim of gold.

"It's elegant," said Rose.

"I'll show you my bonnet," said Charlotte. She went into a closet and emerged with a great green bandbox.

Rose bent over, watching her breathlessly as she opened it. "Oh!" she cried. "Oh, Charlotte!"

Charlotte held up the bonnet of fine Dunstable straw, flaring in front, and trimmed under the brim with a delicate lace ruche and a wreath of feathery white flowers. Bows of white gauze ribbon stood up from it stiffly. Long ribbon strings floated back over her arm as she held it up.

"Try it on," said Rose.

Charlotte stepped before the glass and adjusted the bonnet to her head. She tied the strings carefully under her chin in a great square bow; then she turned towards Rose. The fine white wreath under the brim encircled her face like a nimbus; she looked as she might have done sitting a bride in the meeting-house.

"It's beautiful," Rose said, smiling, with grave eyes. "You look real handsome in it, Charlotte." Charlotte stood motionless a moment, with Rose surveying her.

"Oh, Charlotte," Rose cried out, suddenly, "I don't believe but what you'll have him, after all!" Rose's eyes were sharp upon Charlotte's face. It was as if the bridal robes, which were so evident, became suddenly proofs of something tangible and real, like a garment left by a ghost. Rose felt a sudden conviction that the quarrel was but a temporary thing; that Charlotte would marry Barney, and that she knew it.

A change came over Charlotte's face. She began untying the bonnet strings.

"Sha'n't you?" repeated Rose, breathlessly.

"No, I sha'n't."

Charlotte took the bonnet off and smoothed the creases carefully out of the strings.

"If I were you," Rose cried out, "I'd feel like tearing that bonnet to pieces!"

Charlotte replaced it in the bandbox, and began unfastening her dress.

"I don't see how you can bear the sight of them. I don't believe I could bear them in the house!" Rose cried out again. "I would put that dress in the rag-bag if it was mine!" Her cheeks burned and her eyes were quite fierce upon the dress as Charlotte slipped it off and it fell to the floor in a rustling heap around her.

"I don't see any sense in losing everything you have ever had because you haven't got anything now," Charlotte returned, in a stern voice. She laid the shining silk gown carefully on the bed, and put on her cotton one again. Her face was quite steady.

Rose watched her with the same sharp question in her eyes. "You know you and Barney will make it up," she said, at length.

"No, I don't," returned Charlotte. "Suppose we go down-stairs now. I've got some work I ought to do."

Charlotte pulled down the green paper shades of the windows, and went out of the room. Rose followed. Charlotte turned to go down-stairs, but Rose caught her arm.

"Wait a minute," said she. "Look here, Charlotte."

"What is it?"

"Charlotte," said Rose again; then she stopped.

Charlotte turned and looked at her. Rose's eyes met hers, and her face had a noble expression.

"You write a note to him, and I'll carry it," said Rose. "I'll go down in the field where he is, on my way home."

Tears sprang into Charlotte's eyes. "You're real good, Rose," she said; "but I can't."

"Hadn't you better?"

"No; I can't. Don't let's talk any more about it."

Charlotte pushed past Rose's detaining hand, and the girls went down-stairs. Mrs. Barnard looked around dejectedly at them as they entered the kitchen. Her eyes were red, and her mouth drooping; she was clearing the debris of the pies from the table; there was a smell of baking, but Cephas had gone out. She tried to smile at Rose. "Are you goin' now?" said she.

"Yes; I've got to. I've got to sew on my muslin dress. When are you coming over, Aunt Sarah? You haven't been over to our house for an age."

"I don't care if I never go anywhere!" cried Sarah Barnard, with sudden desperation. "I'm discouraged." She sank in a chair, and flung her apron over her face.

"Don't, mother," said Charlotte.

"I can't help it," sobbed her mother. "You're young and you've got more strength to bear it, but mine's all gone. I feel worse about you than if it was myself, an' there's so much to put up with besides. I don't feel as if I could put up with things much longer, nohow."

"Uncle Cephas ought to be ashamed of himself!" Rose cried out.

Sarah stood up. "Well, I don't s'pose I have so much to put up with as some folks," she said, catching her breath as if it were her dignity. "Your Uncle Cephas means well. It did seem as if them sorrel pies were the last straw, but I hadn't ought to have minded it."

"You haven't got to eat sorrel pies, have you?" Rose asked, in a bewildered way.

"I don't s'pose they'll be any worse than some other things we eat," Sarah answered, scraping the pie-board again.

"I don't see how you can."

"I guess they won't hurt us any," Sarah said, shortly, and Rose looked abashed.

"Well, I must be going," said she.

As she went out, she looked hesitatingly at Charlotte. "Hadn't you better?" she whispered. Charlotte shook her head, and Rose went out into the spring sunlight. She bent her head as she went down the road before the sweet gusts of south wind; the white apple-trees seemed to sing, for she could not see the birds in them.

Rose's face between the green sides of her bonnet had in it all the quickened bloom of youth in spring; her eyes had all the blue surprise of violets; she panted softly between red swelling lips as she walked; pulses beat in her crimson cheeks. Her slender figure yielded to the wind as to a lover. She passed Barney Thayer's new house; then she came opposite the field where he was at work ploughing, driving a white horse, stooping to his work in his blue frock.

Rose stood still and looked at him; then she walked on a little way; then she paused again. Barney never looked around at her. There was the width of a field between them.

Finally Rose went through the open bars into the first field. She crossed it slowly, holding up her skirts where there was a wet gleam through darker grass, and getting a little nosegay of violets with a busy air, as if that were what she had come for. She passed through the other bars into the second field, and Barney was only a little way from her. He did not glance at her then. He was ploughing with the look that Cadmus might have worn preparing the ground for the dragon's teeth.

Rose held up her skirts, and went along the furrows behind him. "Hullo, Barney," she said, in a trembling voice.

"Hullo," he returned, without looking around, and he kept on, with Rose following.

"Barney," said she, timidly.

"Well?" said Barney, half turning, with a slight show of courtesy.

"Do you know if Rebecca is at home?"

"I don't know whether she is or not."

Barney held stubbornly to his rocking plough, and Rose followed.

"Barney," said she, again.

"Well?"

"Stop a minute, and look round here."

"I can't stop to talk."

"Yes, you can; just a minute. Look round here."

Barney stopped, and turned a stern, miserable face over his shoulder.

"I've been up to Charlotte's," Rose said.

"I don't know what that is to me."

"Barney Thayer, ain't you ashamed of yourself?"

"I can't stop to talk."

"Yes, you can. Look here. Charlotte feels awfully."

Barney stood with his back to Rose; his very shoulders had a dogged look.

"Barney, why don't you make up with her?"

Barney stood still.

"Barney, she feels awfully because you didn't come back when she called you last night."

Barney made no reply. He and the white horse stood like statues.

"Barney, why don't you make up with her? I wish you would." Rose's voice was full of tender inflections; it might have been that of an angel peace-making.

Barney turned around between the handles of the plough, and looked at her steadily. "You don't know anything about it, Rose," he said.

Rose looked up in his face, and her own was full of fine pleading. "Oh, Barney," she said, "poor Charlotte does feel so bad! I know that anyhow."

"You don't know how I am situated. I can't—"

"Do go and see her, Barney."

"Do you think I'm going into Cephas Barnard's house after he's ordered me out?"

"Go up the road a little way, and she'll come and meet you. I'll run ahead and tell her."

Barney shook his head. "I can't; you don't know anything about it, Rose." He looked into Rose's eyes. "You're real good, Rose," he said, as if with a sudden recognition of her presence.

Rose blushed softly, a new look came into her eyes, she smiled up at him, and her face was all pink and sweet and fully set towards him, like a rose for which he was a sun.

"No, I ain't good," she whispered.

"Yes, you are; but I can't. You don't know anything about it." He swung about and grasped his plough-handles again.

"Barney, do stop a minute," Rose pleaded.

"I can't stop any longer; there's no use talking," Barney said; and he went on remorselessly through the opening furrow. Just before he turned the corner Rose made a little run forward and caught his arm.

"You don't think I've done anything out of the way speaking to you about it, do you, Barney?" she said, and she was half crying.

"I don't know why I should think you had; I suppose you meant all right," Barney said. He pulled his arm away softly, and jerked the right rein to turn the horse. "G'lang!" he cried out, and strode forward with a conclusive air.

Rose stood looking after him a minute; then she struck off across the field. Her knees trembled as she stepped over the soft plough-ridges.

When she was out on the road again she went along quickly until she came to the Thayer house. She was going past that when she heard some one calling her name, and turned to see who it was.

Rebecca Thayer came hurrying out of the yard with a basket on her arm. "Wait a minute," she called, "and I'll go along with you."



Chapter V

Rebecca, walking beside Rose, looked like a woman of another race. She was much taller, and her full, luxuriant young figure looked tropical beside Rose's slender one. Her body undulated as she walked, but Rose moved only with forward flings of delicate limbs.

"I've got to carry these eggs down to the store and get some sugar," said Rebecca.

Rose assented, absently. She was full of the thought of her talk with Barney.

"It's a pleasant day, ain't it?" said Rebecca.

"Yes, it's real pleasant. Say, Rebecca, I'm awful afraid I made Barney mad just now."

"Why, what did you do?"

"I stopped in the field when I was going by. I'd been up to see Charlotte, and I said something about it to him."

"How much do you know about it?" Rebecca asked, abruptly.

"Charlotte told me this mornin', and last night when I was going to her house across lots I saw Barney going, and heard her calling him back. I thought I'd see if I couldn't coax him to make up with her, but I couldn't."

"Oh, he'll come round," said Rebecca.

"Then you think it'll be made up?" Rose asked, quickly.

"Of course it will. We're having a terrible time about poor Barney. He didn't come home last night, and it's much as ever he's spoken this morning. He wouldn't eat any breakfast. He just went into his room, and put on his other clothes, and then went out in the field to work. He wouldn't tell mother anything about it. I never saw her so worked up. She's terribly afraid he's done something wrong."

"He hasn't done anything wrong," returned Rose. "I think your mother is terrible hard on him. It's Uncle Cephas; he just picked the quarrel. He hasn't never more'n half liked Barney. So you think Barney will make up with Charlotte, and they'll get married, after all?"

"Of course they will," Rebecca replied, promptly. "I guess they won't be such fools as not to for such a silly reason as that, when Barney's got his house 'most done, and Charlotte has got all her wedding-clothes ready."

"Ain't Barney terrible set?"

"He's set enough, but I guess you'll find he won't be this time."

"Well, I'm sure I hope he won't be," Rose said, and she walked along silently, her face sober in the depths of her bonnet.

They came to Richard Alger's house on the right-hand side of the road, and Rebecca looked reflectively at the white cottage with its steep peak of Gothic roof set upon a ploughed hill. "It's queer how he's been going with your aunt Sylvy all these years," she said.

"Yes, 'tis," assented Rose, and she too glanced up at the house. As they looked, a man came around the corner with a basket. He was about to plant potatoes in his hilly yard.

"There he is now," said Rose.

They watched Richard Alger coming towards them, past a great tree whose new leaves were as red as flowers.

"What do you suppose the reason is?" Rebecca said, in a low voice.

"I don't know. I suppose he's got used to living this way."

"I shouldn't think they'd be very happy," Rebecca said; and she blushed, and her voice had a shamefaced tone.

"I don't suppose it makes so much difference when folks get older," Rose returned.

"Maybe it don't. Rose."

"What is it?"

"I wish you'd go into the store with me."

Rose laughed. "What for?"

"Nothing. Only I wish you would."

"You afraid of William?" Rose peered around into Rebecca's bonnet.

Rebecca blushed until tears came to her eyes. "I'd like to know what I'd be afraid of William Berry for," she replied.

"Then what do you want me to go into the store with you for?"

"Nothing."

"You're a great ninny, Rebecca Thayer," Rose said, laughing, "but I'll go if you want me to. I know William won't like it. You run away from him the whole time. There isn't another girl in Pembroke treats him as badly as you do."

"I don't treat him badly."

"Yes, you do. And I don't believe but what you like him, Rebecca Thayer; you wouldn't act so silly if you didn't."

Rebecca was silent. Rose peered around in her face again. "I was only joking. I think a sight more of you for not running after him, and so does William. You haven't any idea how some of the girls act chasing to the store. Mother and I have counted 'em some days, and then we plague William about it, but he won't own up they come to see him. He acts more ashamed of it than the girls do."

"That's one thing I never would do—run after any fellow," said Rebecca.

"I wouldn't either."

Then the two girls had reached the tavern and the store. Rose's father, Silas Berry, had kept the tavern, but now it was closed, except to occasional special guests. He had gained a competency, and his wife Hannah had rebelled against further toil. Then, too, the railroad had been built through East Pembroke instead of Pembroke, the old stage line had become a thing of the past, and the tavern was scantily patronized. Still, Silas Berry had given it up with great reluctance; he cherished a grudge against his wife because she had insisted upon it, and would never admit that business policy had aught to do with it.

The store adjoining the tavern, which he had owned for years, he still retained, but his son William had charge of it. Silas Berry was growing old, and the year before had had a slight shock of paralysis, which had made him halt and feeble, although his mind was as clear as ever. However, although he took no active part in the duties of the store, he was still there, and sharply watchful for his interests, the greater part of every day.

The two girls went up the steps to the store piazza. Rose stepped forward and looked in the door. "Father's in there, and Tommy Ray," she whispered. "You needn't be afraid to go in." But she entered as she spoke, and Rebecca followed her.

There was one customer in the great country store, a stout old man, on the grocery side. His broad red face turned towards them a second, then squinted again at some packages on the counter. He was haggling for garden seeds. William Berry, who was waiting upon him, did not apparently look at his sister and Rebecca Thayer, but Rebecca had entered his heart as well as the store, and he saw her face deep in his own consciousness.

Tommy Ray, the great white-headed boy who helped William in the store, shuffled along behind the counter indeterminately, but the girls did not seem to see him. Rose was talking fast to Rebecca. He lounged back against the shelves, stared out the door, and whistled.

Out of the obscurity in the back of the store an old man's narrow bristling face peered, watchful as a cat, his body hunched up in a round-backed arm-chair.

"Mr. Nims will go in a minute," Rose whispered, and presently the old farmer clamped past them out the door, counting his change from one hand to the other, his lips moving.

William Berry replaced the seed packages which the customer had rejected on the shelves as the girls approached him.

"Rebecca's got some eggs to sell," Rose announced.



William Berry's thin, wide-shouldered figure towered up behind the counter; he smiled, and the smile was only a deepening of the pleasant intensity of his beardless face, with its high pale forehead and smooth crest of fair hair. The lines in his face scarcely changed.

"How d'ye do?" said he.

"How d'ye do?" returned Rebecca, with fluttered dignity. Her face bloomed deeply pink in the green tunnel of her sun-bonnet, her black eyes were as soft and wary as a baby's, her full red lips had a grave, innocent expression.

"How many dozen eggs have you got, Rebecca?" Rose inquired, peering into the basket.

"Two; mother couldn't spare any more to-day," Rebecca replied, in a trembling voice.

"How much sugar do you give for two dozen eggs, William?" asked Rose.

William hesitated; he gave a scarcely perceptible glance towards the watchful old man, whose eyes seemed to gleam out of the gloom in the back of the store. "Well, about two pounds and a half," he replied, in a low voice.

Rebecca set her basket of eggs on the counter.

"How many pound did you tell her, William?" called the old man's hoarse voice.

William compressed his lips. "About two and a half, father."

"How many?"

"Two and a half."

"How many dozen of eggs?"

"Two."

"You ain't offerin' of her two pound of sugar for two dozen eggs?"

"I said two pounds and a half of sugar, father," said William. He began counting the eggs.

"Be you gone crazy?"

"Never mind," whispered Rebecca. "That's too much sugar for the eggs. Mother didn't expect so much. Don't say any more about it, William." Her face was quite steady and self-possessed now, as she looked at William, frowning heavily over the eggs.

"Give Rebecca two pounds of sugar for the eggs, father, and call it square," Rose called out.

Silas Berry pulled himself up a joint at a time; then he came forward at a stiff halt, his face pointing out in advance of his body. He entered at the gap in the counter, and pressed close to his son's side. Then he looked sharply across at Rebecca. "Sugar is fourteen cents a pound now," said he, "an' eggs ain't fetchin' more'n ten cents a dozen. You tell your mother."

"Father, I told her I'd giver her two and a half pounds for two dozen," said William; he was quite pale. He began counting the eggs over again, and his hands trembled.

"I'll take just what you're willing to give," Rebecca said to Silas.

"Sugar is fourteen cents a pound, an' eggs is fetchin' ten cents a dozen," said the old man; "you can have a pound and a half of sugar for them eggs if you can give me a cent to boot."

Rebecca colored. "I'm afraid I haven't got a cent with me," said she; "I didn't fetch my purse. You'll have to give me a cent's worth less sugar, Mr. Berry."

"It's kinder hard to calkilate so close as that," returned Silas, gravely; "you had better tell your mother about it, an' you come back with the cent by-an'-by."

"Why, father!" cried Rose.

William shouldered his father aside with a sudden motion. "I'm tending to this, father," he said, in a stern whisper; "you leave it alone."

"I ain't goin' to stan' by an' see you givin' twice as much for eggs as they're worth 'cause it's a gal you're tradin' with. That wa'n't never my way of doin' business, an' I ain't goin' to have it done in my store. I shouldn't have laid up a cent if I'd managed any such ways, an' I ain't goin' to see my hard earnin's wasted by you. You give her a pound and a half of sugar for them eggs and a cent to boot."

"You sha'n't lose anything by it, father," said William, fiercely. "You leave me alone."

The sugar-barrel stood quite near. William strode over to it, and plunged in the great scoop with a grating noise. He heaped it recklessly on some paper, and laid it on the steelyards.

"Don't give me more'n a pound and a half," Rebecca said, softly.

"Keep still," Rose whispered in her ear.

Silas pushed forward, and bent over the steelyards. "You've weighed out nigh three," he began. Then his son's face suddenly confronted his, and he stopped talking and stood back.

Almost involuntarily at times Silas Berry yielded to the combination of mental and superior physical force in his son. While his own mind had lost nothing of its vigor, his bodily weakness made him distrustful of it sometimes, when his son towered over him in what seemed the might of his own lost strength and youth, brandishing his own old weapons.

William tied up the sugar neatly; then he took the eggs from Rebecca's basket, and put the parcel in their place. Silas began lifting the eggs from the box in which William had put them, and counted them eagerly.

"There ain't but twenty-three eggs here," he called out, as Rebecca and Rose turned away, and William was edging after them from behind the counter.

"I thought there were two dozen," Rebecca responded, in a distressed voice.

"Of course there are two dozen," said Rose, promptly. "You 'ain't counted 'em right, father. Go along, Rebecca; it's all right."

"I tell ye it ain't," said Silas. "There ain't but twenty-three. It's bad enough to be payin' twice what they're wuth for eggs, without havin' of 'em come short."

"I tell you I counted 'em twice over, and they're all right. You keep still, father," said William's voice at his ear, in a fierce whisper, and Silas subsided into sullen mutterings.

William had meditated following Rebecca to the door; he had even meditated going farther; but now he stood back behind the counter, and began packing up some boxes with a busy air.

"Ain't you going a piece with Rebecca, and carry her basket, William?" Rose called back, when the two girls reached the door.

Rebecca clutched her arm. "Oh, don't," she gasped, and Rose giggled.

"Ain't you, William?" she said again.

Rebecca hurried out the door, but she heard William reply coldly that he couldn't, he was too busy. She was half crying when Rose caught up with her.

"William wanted to go bad enough, but he was too upset by what father said. You mustn't mind father," Rose said, peering around into Rebecca's bonnet. "Why, Rebecca, what is the matter?"

"I didn't go into that store a step to see William Berry. You know I didn't," Rebecca cried out, with sudden passion. Her voice was hoarse with tears; her face was all hot and quivering with shame and anger.

"Why, of course you didn't," Rose returned, in a bewildered way. "Who said you did, Rebecca?"

"You know I didn't. I hated to go to the store this morning. I told mother I didn't want to, but she didn't have a mite of sugar in the house, and there wasn't anybody else to send. Ephraim ain't very well, and Doctor Whiting says he ought not to walk very far. I had to come, but I didn't come to see William Berry, and nobody has any call to think I did."

"I don't know who said you did. I don't know what you mean, Rebecca."

"You acted as if you thought so. I don't want William Berry seeing me home in broad daylight, when I've been to the store to trade, and you needn't think that's what I came for, and he needn't."

"Good land, Rebecca Thayer, he didn't, and I was just in fun. He'd have come with you, but he was so mad at what father said that he backed out. William's just about as easy upset as you are. I didn't mean any harm. Say, Rebecca, come into the house a little while, can't you? I don't believe your mother is in any great hurry for the sugar." Rose took hold of Rebecca's arm, but Rebecca jerked herself away with a sob, and went down the road almost on a run.

"Well, I hope you're touchy enough, Rebecca Thayer," Rose called out, as she stood looking after her. "Folks will begin to think you did come to see William if you make such a fuss when nobody accuses you of it, if you don't look out."

Rebecca hastened trembling down the road. She made no reply, but she knew that Rose was quite right, and that she had attacked her with futile reproaches in order to save herself from shame in her own eyes. Rebecca knew quite well that in spite of her hesitation and remonstrances, in spite of her maiden shrinking on the threshold of the store, she had come to see William Berry. She had been glad, although she had turned a hypocritical face towards her own consciousness, that Ephraim was not well enough and she was obliged to go. Her heart had leaped with joy when Rose had proposed William's walking home with her, but when he refused she was crushed with shame. "He thought I came to see him," she kept saying to herself as she hurried along, and there was no falsehood that she would not have sworn to to shield her modesty from such a thought on his part.

When she got home and entered the kitchen, she kept her face turned away from her mother. "Here's the sugar," she said, and she took it out of the basket and placed it on the table.

"How much did he give you?" asked Deborah Thayer; she was standing beside the window beating eggs. Over in the field she could catch a glimpse of Barnabas now and then between the trees as he passed with his plough.

"About two pounds."

"That was doin' pretty well."

Rebecca said nothing. She turned to go out of the room.

"Where are you going?" her mother asked, sharply. "Take off your bonnet. I want you to beat up the butter and sugar; this cake ought to be in the oven."

Deborah's face, as she beat the eggs and made cake, looked as full of stern desperation as a soldier's on the battle-field. Deborah never yielded to any of the vicissitudes of life; she met them in fair fight like enemies, and vanquished them, not with trumpet and spear, but with daily duties. It was a village story how Deborah Thayer cleaned all the windows in the house one afternoon when her first child had died in the morning. To-day she was in a tumult of wrath and misery over her son; her mouth was so full of the gall of bitterness that no sweet on earth could overcome it; but she made sweet cake.

Rebecca took off her sun-bonnet and hung it on a peg; she got a box from the pantry, and emptied the sugar into in, still keeping her face turned away as best she could from her mother's eyes.

Deborah looked approvingly at the sugar. "It's nigher three pounds than anything else. I guess you were kind of favored, Rebecca. Did William wait on you?"

"Yes, he did."

"I guess you were kind of favored," Deborah repeated, and a half-smile came over her grim face.

Rebecca said nothing. She got some butter, and fell to work with a wooden spoon, creaming the butter and sugar in a brown wooden bowl with swift turns of her strong white wrist. Ephraim watched her sharply; he sat by a window stoning raisins. His mother had forbidden him to eat any, as she thought them injurious to him; but he carefully calculated his chances, and deposited many in his mouth when she watched Barney; but his jaws were always gravely set when she turned his way.

Ephraim's face had a curious bluish cast, as if his blood were the color of the juice of a grape. His chest heaved shortly and heavily. The village doctor had told is mother that he had heart-disease, which might prove fatal, although there was a chance of his outgrowing it, and Deborah had set her face against that.

Ephraim's face, in spite of its sickly hue, had a perfect healthiness and naturalness of expression, which insensibly gave confidence to his friends, although it aroused their irritation. A spirit of boyish rebellion and importance looked out of Ephraim's black eyes; his mouth was demure with mischief, his gawky figure perpetually uneasy and twisting, as if to find entrance into small forbidden places. There was something in Ephraim's face, when she looked suddenly at him, which continually led his mother to infer that he had been transgressing. "What have you been doin', Ephraim?" she would call out, sharply, many a time, with no just grounds for suspicion, and be utterly routed by Ephraim's innocent, wondering grin in response.

The boy was set about with restrictions which made his life miserable, but the labor of picking over plums for a cake was quite to his taste. He dearly loved plums, although they were especially prohibited. He rolled one quietly under his tongue, and watched Rebecca with sharp eyes. She could scarcely keep her face turned away from him and her mother too.

"Say, mother, Rebecca's been cryin'!" Ephraim announced, suddenly.

Deborah turned and looked at Rebecca's face bending lower over the wooden bowl; her black lashes rested on red circles, and her lips were swollen.

"I'd like to know what you've been cryin' about," said Deborah. It was odd that she did not think that Rebecca's grief might be due to the worry over Barney; but she did not for a minute. She directly attributed it to some personal and strictly selfish consideration which should arouse her animosity.

"Nothing," said Rebecca, with sulky misery.

"Yes, you've been cryin' about something, too. I want to know what 'tis."

"Nothing. I wish you wouldn't, mother."

"Did you see William Berry over to the store?"

"I told you I did once."

"Well, you needn't bite my head off. Did he say anything to you?"

"He weighed out the sugar. I know one thing: I'll never set my foot inside that store again as long as I live!"

"I'd like to know what you mean, Rebecca Thayer."

"I ain't going to have folks think I'm running after William Berry."

"I'd like to know who thinks you are. If it's Hannah Berry, she needn't talk, after the way her daughter has chased over here. Mebbe it's all you Rose Berry has been to see, but I've had my doubts. What did Hannah Berry say to you?"

"She didn't say anything. I haven't seen her."

"What was it, then?"

But Rebecca would not tell her mother what the trouble had been; she could not bring herself to reveal how William had been urged to walk home with her and how coldly he had refused, and finally Deborah, in spite of baffled interest, turned upon her. "Well, I hope you didn't do anything unbecoming," said she.

"Mother, you know better."

"Well, I hope you didn't."

"Mother, I won't stand being talked to so!"

"I rather think I shall talk to you all I think I ought to for your own good," said Deborah, with fierce persistency. "I ain't goin' to have any daughter of mine doin' anything bold and forward, if I know it."

Rebecca was weeping quite openly now. "Mother, you know you sent me down to the store yourself; there wasn't anybody else to go," she sobbed out.

"Your goin' to the store wa'n't anything. I guess you can go to the store to trade off some eggs for sugar when I'm makin' cake without William Berry thinkin' you're runnin' after him, or Hannah Berry thinkin' so either. But there wa'n't any need of your makin' any special talk with him, or lookin' as if you was tickled to death to see him."

"I didn't. I wouldn't go across the room to see William Berry. You haven't any right to say such things to me, mother."

"I guess I've got a right to talk to my own daughter. I should think things had come to a pretty pass if I can't speak when I see you doin' out of the way. I know one thing, you won't go to that store again. I'll go myself next time. Have you got that butter an' sugar mixed up?"

"I hope you will go, I'm sure. I don't want to," returned Rebecca. She had stopped crying, but her face was burning; she hit the spoon with dull thuds against the wooden bowl.

"Don't you be saucy. That's done enough; give it here."

Deborah finished the cake with a master hand. When she measured the raisins which Ephraim had stoned she cast a sharp glance at him, but he was ready for it with beseechingly upturned sickly face. "Can't I have just one raisin, mother?" he pleaded.

"Yes, you may, if you 'ain't eat any while you was pickin' of 'em over," she answered. And he reached over a thumb and finger and selected a large fat plum, which he ate with ostentatious relish. Ephraim's stomach oppressed him, his breath came harder, but he had a sense of triumph in his soul. This depriving him of the little creature comforts which he loved, and of the natural enjoyments of boyhood, aroused in him a blind spirit of revolution which he felt virtuous in exercising. Ephraim was absolutely conscienceless with respect to all his stolen pleasures.

Deborah had a cooking-stove. She had a progressive spirit, and when stoves were first introduced had promptly done away with the brick oven, except on occasions when much baking-room was needed. After her new stove was set up in her back kitchen, she often alluded to Hannah Berry's conservative principles with scorn. Hannah's sister, Mrs. Barnard, had told her how a stove could be set up in the tavern any minute; but Hannah despised new notions. "Hannah won't have one, nohow," said Mrs. Barnard. "I dunno but I would, if Cephas could afford it, and wa'n't set against it. It seems to me it might save a sight of work."

"Some folks are rooted so deep in old notions that they can't see their own ideas over them," declared Deborah. Often when she cooked in her new stove she inveighed against Hannah Berry's foolishness.

"If Hannah Berry wants to heat up a whole brick oven and work the whole forenoon to bake a loaf of cake, she can," said she, as she put the pan of cake in the oven. "Now, you watch this, Rebecca Thayer, and don't you let it burn, and you get the potatoes ready for dinner."

"Where are you going, mother?" asked Ephraim.

"I'm just goin' to step out a little way."

"Can't I go too?"

"No; you set still. You ain't fit to walk this mornin'. You know what the doctor told you."

"It won't hurt me any," whined Ephraim. There were times when the spirit of rebellion in him made illness and even his final demise flash before his eyes like sweet overhanging fruit, since they were so strenuously forbidden.

"You set still," repeated his mother. She tied on her own green sun-bonnet, stiffened with pasteboard, and went with it rattling against her ears across the fields to the one where her son was ploughing. The grass was not wet, but she held her dress up high, showing her thick shoes and her blue yarn stockings, and took long strides. Barney was guiding the plough past her when she came up.

"You stop a minute," she said, authoritatively. "I want to speak to you."

"Whoa!" said Barney, and pulled up the horse. "Well, what is it?" he said, gruffly, with his eyes upon the plough.

"You go this minute and set the men to work on your house again. You leave the horse here—I'll watch him—and go and tell Sam Plummer to come and get the other men."

"G'lang!" said Barney, and the horse pulled the plough forward with a jerk.

Mrs. Thayer seized Barney's arm. "You stop!" said she. "Whoa, whoa! Now you look here, Barnabas Thayer. I don't know what you did to make Cephas Barnard order you out of the house, but I know it was something. I ain't goin' to believe it was all about the election. There was something back of that. I ain't goin' to shield you because you're my son. I know jest how set you can be in your own ways, and how you can hang on to your temper. I've known you ever since you was a baby; you can't teach me anything new about yourself. I don't know what you did to make Cephas mad, but I know what you've got to do now. You go and set the men to work on that house again, and then you go over to Cephas Barnard's, and you tell him you're sorry for what you've done. I don't care anything about Cephas Barnard, and if I'd had my way in the first place I wouldn't have had anything to do with him or his folks either; but now you've got to do what's right if you've gone as far as this, and Charlotte's all ready to be married. You go right along, Barnabas Thayer!"

Barnabas stood immovable, his face set past his mother, as irresponsively unyielding as a rock.

"Be you goin'?"

Barnabas did not reply. His mother moved, and brought her eyes on a range with his, and the two faces confronted each other in silence, while it was as if two wills clashed swords in advance of them.

Then Mrs. Thayer moved away. "I ain't never goin' to say anything more to you about it," she said; "but there's one thing—you needn't come home to dinner. You sha'n't ever sit down to a meal in your father's and mother's house whilst this goes on."

"G'lang!" said Barnabas. The horse started, and he bent to the plough. His mother stepped homeward over the plough-ridges with stern unyielding steps, as if they were her enemies slain in battle.

Just as she reached her own yard her husband drove in on a rattling farm cart. She beckoned to him, and he pulled the horse up short.

"I've told him he needn't come home to dinner," she said, standing close to the wheel.

Caleb looked down at her with a scared expression. "Well, I s'pose you know what's best, Deborah," he said.

"If he can't do what's right he's got to suffer for it," returned Deborah.

She went into the house, and Caleb drove clanking into the barn.

Before dinner the old man stole off across lots, keeping well out of sight of the kitchen windows lest his wife should see him, and pleaded with Barnabas, but all in vain. The young man was more outspoken with his father, but he was just as firm.

"Your mother's terrible set about it, Barney. You'd better go over to Charlotte's and make up."

"I can't; it's all over," Barney said, in reply; and Caleb at length plodded soberly and clumsily home.

After dinner he went out behind the barn, and Rebecca, going to feed the hens, found him sitting under the wild-cherry tree, fairly sobbing in his old red handkerchief.

She went near him, and stood looking at him with restrained sympathy.

"Don't feel bad, father," she said, finally. "Barney'll get over it, and come to supper."

"No, he won't," groaned the old man—"no, he won't. He's jest like your mother."



Chapter VI

The weeks went on, and still Barnabas had not yielded. The story of his quarrel with Cephas Barnard and his broken engagement with Charlotte had become an old one in Pembroke, but it had not yet lost its interest. A genuine excitement was so rare in the little peaceful village that it had to be made to last, and rolled charily under the tongue like a sweet morsel. However, there seemed to be no lack now, for the one had set others in motion: everybody knew how Barnabas Thayer no longer lived at home, and did not sit in his father's pew in church, but in the gallery, and how Richard Alger had stopped going to see Sylvia Crane.

There was not much walking in the village, except to and from church on a Sabbath day; but now on pleasant Sabbath evenings an occasional couple, or an inquisitive old man with eyes sharp under white brows, and chin set ahead like a pointer's, strolled past Sylvia's house and the Thayer house, Barney's new one and Cephas Barnard's.

They looked sharply and furtively to see if Sylvia had a light in her best room, and if Richard Alger's head was visible through the window, if Barney Thayer had gone home and yielded to his mother's commands, if any more work had been done on the new house, and if he perchance had gone a-courting Charlotte again.

But they never saw Richard Alger's face in poor Sylvia's best room, although her candle was always lit, they never saw Barney at his old home, the new house advanced not a step beyond its incompleteness, and Barney never was seen at Charlotte Barnard's on a Sabbath night. Once, indeed, there was a rumor to that effect. A man's smooth dark head was visible at one of the front-room windows opposite Charlotte's fair one, and everybody took it for Barney's.

The next morning Barney's mother came to the door of the new house. "I want to know if it's true that you went over there last night," she said; her voice was harsh, but her mouth was yielding.

"No, I didn't," said Barney, shortly, and Deborah went away with a harsh exclamation. Before long she knew and everybody else knew that the man who had been seen at Charlotte's window was not Barney, but Thomas Payne.

Presently Ephraim came slowly across to the garden-patch where Barney was planting. He was breathing heavily, and grinning. When he reached Barney he stood still watching him, and the grin deepened. "Say, Barney," he panted at length.

"Well, what is it?"

"You've lost your girl; did you know it, Barney?"

Barney muttered something unintelligible; it sounded like the growl of a dog, but Ephraim was not intimidated. He chuckled with delight and spoke again. "Say, Barney, Thomas Payne's got your girl; did you know it, Barney?"

Barney turned threateningly, but he was helpless before his brother's sickly face, and Ephraim knew it. That purple hue and that panting breath had gained an armistice for him on many a battle-field, and he had a certain triumph in it. It was power of a lugubrious sort, certainly, but still it was power, and so to be enjoyed.

"Thomas Payne's got your girl," he repeated; "he was over there a-courtin' of her last night; a-settin' up along of her."

Barney took a step forward, and Ephraim fell back a little, still grinning imperturbably. "You mind your own business," Barney said, between his teeth; and right upon his words followed Ephraim's hoarse chuckle and his "Thomas Payne's got your girl."

Barney turned about and went on with his planting. Ephraim, standing a little aloof, somewhat warily since his brother's threatening advance, kept repeating his one remark, as mocking as the snarl of a mosquito. "Thomas Payne's got your girl, Barney. Say, did you know it? Thomas Payne's got your girl."

Finally Ephraim stepped close to Barney and shouted it into his ear: "Say, Barney, Barney Thayer, be you deaf? Thomas Payne has got—your—girl!" But Barney planted on; his nerves were quivering, the impetus to strike out was so strong in his arms that it seemed as if it must by sheer mental force affect his teasing brother, but he made no sign, and said not another word.

Ephraim, worsted at length by silence, beat a gradual retreat. Half-way across the field his panting voice called back, "Barney, Thomas Payne has got your girl," and ended in a choking giggle. Barney planted, and made no response; but when Ephraim was well out of sight, he flung down his hoe with a groaning sigh, and went stumbling across the soft loam of the garden-patch into a little woody thicket beside it. He penetrated deeply between the trees and underbrush, and at last flung himself down on his face among the soft young flowers and weeds. "Oh, Charlotte!" he groaned out. "Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte!" Barney began sobbing and crying like a child as he lay there; he moved his arms convulsively, and tore up handfuls of young grass and leaves, and flung them away in the unconscious gesturing of grief. "Oh, I can't, I can't!" he groaned. "I—can't—Charlotte! I can't—let any other man have you! No other man shall have you!" he cried out, fiercely, and flung up his head; "you are mine, mine! I'll kill any other man that touches you!" Barney got up, and his face was flaming; he started off with a great stride, and then he stopped short and flung an arm around the slender trunk of a white-birch tree, and pulled it against him and leaned against it as if it were Charlotte, and laid his cheek on the cool white bark and sobbed again like a girl. "Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte!" he moaned, and his voice was drowned out by the manifold rustling of the young birch leaves, as a human grief is overborne and carried out of sight by the soft, resistless progress of nature.

Barney, although his faith in Charlotte had been as strong as any man's should be in his promised wife, had now no doubt but this other man had met with favor in her eyes. But he had no blame for her, nor even any surprise at her want of constancy. He blamed the Lord, for Charlotte as well as for himself. "If this hadn't happened she never would have looked at any one else," he thought, and his thought had the force of a blow against fate.

This Thomas Payne was the best match in the village; he was the squire's son, good-looking, and college-educated. Barney had always known that he fancied Charlotte, and had felt a certain triumph that he had won her in the face of it. "You might have somebody that's a good deal better off if you didn't have me," he said to her once, and they both knew whom he meant. "I don't want anybody else," Charlotte had replied, with her shy stateliness. Now Barney thought that she had changed her mind; and why should she not? A girl ought to marry if she could; he could not marry her himself, and should not expect her to remain single all her life for his sake. Of course Charlotte wanted to be married, like other women. This probable desire of Charlotte's for love and marriage in itself, apart from him, thrilled his male fancy with a certain holy awe and respect, from his love for her and utter ignorance of the attitude of womankind. Then, too, he reflected that Thomas Payne would probably make her a good husband. "He can buy her everything she wants," he thought, with a curious mixture of gratulation for her and agony on his own account. He thought of the little bonnets he had meant to buy for her himself, and these details pierced his heart like needles. He sobbed, and the birch-tree quivered in a wind of human grief. He saw Charlotte going to church in her bridal bonnet with Thomas Payne more plainly than he could ever see her in life, for a torturing imagination reflects life like a magnifying-glass, and makes it clearer and larger than reality. He saw Charlotte with Thomas Payne, blushing all over her proud, delicate face when he looked at her; he saw her with Thomas Payne's children. "O God!" he gasped, and he threw himself down on the ground again, and lay there, face downward, motionless as if fate had indeed seized him and shaken the life out of him and left him there for dead; but it was his own will which was his fate.

"Barney," his father called, somewhere out in the field. "Barney, where be you?"

"I'm coming," Barney called back, in a surly voice, and he pulled himself up and pushed his way out of the thicket to the ploughed field where his father stood.

"Oh, there you be!" said Caleb. Barney grunted something inarticulate, and took up his hoe again. Caleb stood watching him, his eyes irresolute under anxiously frowning brows. "Barney," he said, at length.

"Well, what do you want?"

"I've jest heard—" the old man began; then he stopped with a jump.

"I don't want to hear what you've heard. Keep it to yourself if you've heard anything!" Barney shouted.

"I didn't know as you knew," Caleb stammered, apologetically. "I didn't know as you'd heard, Barney."

Caleb went to the edge of the field, and sat down on a great stone under a wild-cherry tree. He was not feeling very well; his head was dizzy, and his wife had given him a bowl of thoroughwort and ordered him not to work.

Caleb pushed his hat back and passed his hand across his forehead. It was hot, and his face was flushed. He watched his son following up his work with dogged energy as if it were an enemy, and his mind seemed to turn stupid in the face of speculation, like a boy's over a problem in arithmetic.

There was no human being so strange and mysterious, such an unknown quantity, to Caleb Thayer as his own son. He had not one trait of character in common with him—at least, not one so translated into his own vernacular that he could comprehend it. It was to Caleb as if he looked in a glass expecting to see his own face, and saw therein the face of a stranger.

The wind was quite cool, and blew full on Caleb as he sat there. Barney kept glancing at him. At length he spoke. "You'll get cold if you sit there in that wind, father," he sang out, and there was a rude kindliness in his tone.

Caleb jumped up with alacrity. "I dunno but I shall. I guess you're right. I wa'n't goin' to set here but a minute," he answered, eagerly. Then he went over to Barney again, and stood near watching him. Barney's hoe clinked on a stone, and he stooped and picked it out of the loam, and threw it away. "There's a good many stone in this field," said the old man.

"There's some."

"It was a heap of work clearin' of it in the first place. You wa'n't more'n two year old when I cleared it. My brother Simeon helped me. It was five year before he got the fever an' died." Caleb looked at his son with anxious pleading which was out of proportion to his words, and seemed to apply to something behind them in his own mind.

Barney worked on silently.

"I don't believe but what—if you was—to go over there—you could get her back again now, away from that Payne fellar," Caleb blurted out, suddenly; then he shrank back as if from an anticipated blow.

Barney threw a hoeful of earth high in air and faced his father.

"Once for all, father," said he, "I don't want to hear another word about this."

"I shouldn't have said nothin', Barney, but I kinder thought—"

"I don't care what you thought. Keep your thoughts to yourself."

"I know she allers thought a good deal of you, an'—"

"I don't want another word out of your mouth about it, father."

"Well, I ain't goin' to say nothin' about it if you don't want me to, Barney; but you know how mother feels, an'— Well, I ain't goin' to say no more."

Caleb passed his hand across his forehead, and set off across the field. Just before he was out of hearing, Barney hailed him.

"Do you feel better'n you did, father?" said he.

"What say, Barney?"

"Do you feel better'n you did this morning?"

"Yes, I feel some better, Barney—some considerable better." Caleb started to go back to Barney; then he paused and stood irresolute, smiling towards him. "I feel considerable better," he called again; "my head ain't nigh so dizzy as 'twas."

"You'd better go home, father, and lay down, and see if you can't get a nap," called Barney.

"Yes, I guess I will; I guess 'twould be a good plan," returned the old man, in a pleased voice. And he went on, clambered clumsily over a stone-wall, disappeared behind some trees, reappeared in the open, then disappeared finally over the slope of the hilly field.

It was just five o'clock in the afternoon. Presently a woman came hurrying across the field, with some needle-work gathered up in her arms. She had been spending the afternoon at a neighbor's with her sewing, and was now hastening home to get supper for her husband. She was a pretty woman, and she had not been married long. She nodded to Barney as she hurried past him, holding up her gay-flowered calico skirt tidily. Her smooth fair hair shone like satin in the sun; she wore a little blue kerchief tied over her head, and it slipped back as she ran against the wind. She did not speak to Barney nor smile; he thought her handsome face looked severely at him. She had always known him, although she had not been one of his mates; she was somewhat older.

Barney felt a pang of misery as this fair, severe, and happy face passed him by. He wondered if she had been up to Charlotte's, and if Charlotte or her mother had been talking to her, and if she knew about Thomas Payne. He watched her out of sight in a swirl of gay skirts, her blue and golden head bobbing with her dancing steps; then he glanced over his shoulder at his poor new house, with its fireless chimneys. If all had gone well, he and Charlotte would have been married by this time, and she would have been bestirring herself to get supper for him—perhaps running home from a neighbor's with her sewing as this other woman was doing. All the sweet domestic comfort which he had missed seemed suddenly to toss above his eyes like the one desired fruit of his whole life; its wonderful unknown flavor tantalized his soul. All at once he thought how Charlotte would prepare supper for another man, and the thought seemed to tear his heart like a panther. "He sha'n't have her!" he cried out, quite loudly and fiercely. His own voice seemed to quiet him, and he fell to work again with his mouth set hard.

In half an hour he quitted work, and went up to his house with his hoe over his shoulder like a bayonet. The house was just as the workmen had left it on the night before his quarrel with Cephas Barnard. He had himself fitted some glass into the windows of the kitchen and bedroom, and boarded up the others—that was all. He had purchased a few simple bits of furniture, and set up his miserable bachelor house-keeping. Barney was no cook, and he could purchase no cooked food in Pembroke. He had subsisted mostly upon milk and eggs and a poor and lumpy quality of corn-meal mush, which he had made shift to stir up after many futile efforts.

The first thing which he saw on entering the room to-night was a generous square of light Indian cake on the table. It was not in a plate, the edges were bent and crumbling, and the whole square looked somewhat flattened. Barney knew at once that his father had saved it from his own supper, had slipped it slyly into his pocket, and stolen across the field with it. His mother had not given him a mouthful since she had forbidden him to come home to dinner, and his sister had not dared.

Barney sat down and ate the Indian cake, a solitary householder at his solitary table, around which there would never be any faces but those of his dead dreams. Afterwards he pulled a chair up to an open window, and sat there, resting his elbows on the sill, staring out vacantly. The sun set, and the dusk deepened; the air was loud with birds; there were shouts of children in the distance; gradually these died away, and the stars came out. The wind was damp and sweet; over in the field pale shapes of mist wavered and changed like phantoms. A woman came running noiselessly into the yard, and pressed against the door panting, and knocked. Barney saw the swirl of light skirts around the corner; then the knock came.



He got up, trembling, and opened the door, and stood there looking at the woman, who held her hooded head down.

"It's me, Barney," said Charlotte's voice.

"Come in," said Barney, and he moved aside.

But Charlotte stood still. "I can say what I want to here," she whispered, panting. "Barney."

"Well, what is it, Charlotte?"

"Barney."

Barney waited.

"I've come over here to-night, Barney, to see you," said Charlotte, with solemn pauses between her words. "I don't know as I ought to; I don't know but I ought to have more pride. I thought at first I never—could—but afterwards I thought it was my duty. Barney, are you going to let—anything like this—come between us—forever?"

"There's no use talking, Charlotte."

Charlotte's hooded figure stood before him stiff and straight. There was resolution in her carriage, and her pleading tone was grave and solemn.

"Barney," she said again; and Barney waited, his pale face standing aloof in the dark.

"Barney, do you think it is right to let anything like this come between you and me, when we were almost husband and wife?"

"It's no use talking, Charlotte."

"Do you think this is right, Barney?"

Barney was silent.

"If you can't answer me I will go home," said Charlotte, and she turned, but Barney caught her in his arms. He held her close, breathing in great pants. He pulled her hood back with trembling strength, and kissed her over and over, roughly.

"Charlotte," he half sobbed.

Charlotte's voice, full of a great womanly indignation, sounded in his ear. "Barney, you let me go," she said, and Barney obeyed.

"When I came here alone this way I trusted you to treat me like a gentleman," said she. She pulled her hood over her face again and turned to go. "I shall never speak to you about this again," said she. "You have chosen your own way, and you know best whether it's right, or you're happy in it."

"I hope you'll be happy, Charlotte," Barney said, with a great sigh.

"That doesn't make any difference to you," said Charlotte, coldly.

"Yes, it does; it does, Charlotte! When I heard about Thomas Payne, I felt as if—if it would make you happy. I—"

"What about Thomas Payne?" asked Charlotte, sharply.

"I heard—how he was coming to see you—"

"Do you mean that you want me to marry Thomas Payne, Barney Thayer?"

"I want you to be happy, Charlotte."

"Do you want me to marry Thomas Payne?"

Barney was silent.

"Answer me," cried Charlotte.

"Yes, I do," replied Barney, firmly, "if it would make you happy."

"You want me to marry Thomas Payne?" repeated Charlotte. "You want me to be his wife instead of yours, and go to live with him instead of you? You want me to live with another man?"

"It ain't right for you not to get married," Barney said, and his voice was hoarse and strange.

"You want me to get married to another man? Do you know what it means?"

Barney gave a groan that was half a cry.

"Do you?"

"Oh, Charlotte!" Barney groaned, as if imploring her for pity.

"You want me to marry Thomas Payne, and live with him—"

"He'd—make you a good husband. He's—Charlotte—I can't. You've got to be happy. It isn't right—I can't—"

"Well," said Charlotte, "I will marry him. Good-night, Barney Thayer." She went swiftly out of the yard.

"Charlotte!" Barney called after her, as if against his will; but she never turned her head.



Chapter VII

On the north side of the old tavern was a great cherry orchard. In years back it had been a source of considerable revenue to Silas Berry, but for some seasons his returns from it had been very small. The cherries had rotted on the branches, or the robins had eaten them, for Silas would not give them away. Rose and her mother would smuggle a few small baskets of cherries to Sylvia Crane and Mrs. Barnard, but Silas's displeasure, had he found them out, would have been great. "I ain't a-goin' to give them cherries away to nobody," he would proclaim. "If folks don't want 'em enough to pay for 'em they can go without."

Many a great cherry picnic had been held in Silas Berry's orchard. Parties had come in great rattling wagons from all the towns about, and picked cherries and ate their fill at a most overreaching and exorbitant price.

There were no cherries like those in Silas Berry's orchard in all the country roundabout. There was no competition, and for many years he had had it all his own way. The young people's appetite for cherries and their zeal for pleasure had overcome their indignation at his usury. But at last Silas's greed got the better of his financial shrewdness; he increased his price for cherries every season, and the year after the tavern closed it became so preposterous that there was a rebellion. It was headed by Thomas Payne, who, as the squire's son and the richest and most freehanded young man in town, could incur no suspicion of parsimony. Going one night to the old tavern to make terms with Silas for the use of his cherry orchard, for a party which included some of his college friends from Boston and his fine young-lady cousin from New York, and hearing the preposterous sum which Silas stated as final, he had turned on his heel with a strong word under his breath. "You can eat your cherries yourself and be damned," said Thomas Payne, and was out of the yard with the gay swagger which he had learned along with his Greek and Latin at college. The next day Silas saw the party in Squire Payne's big wagon, with Thomas driving, and the cousin's pink cheeks and white plumed hat conspicuous in the midst, pass merrily on their way to a cherryless picnic at a neighboring pond, and the young college men shouted out a doggerel couplet which the wit of the party had made and set to a rough tune.

"Who lives here?" the basses demanded in grim melody, and the tenors responded, "Old Silas Berry, who charges sixpence for a cherry."

Silas heard the mocking refrain repeated over and over between shouts of laughter long after they were out of sight.

Rose, who had not been bidden to the picnic, heard it and wept as she peered around her curtain at the gay party. William, who had also not been bidden, stormed at his father, and his mother joined him.

"You're jest a-puttin' your own eyes out, Silas Berry," said she; "you hadn't no business to ask such a price for them cherries; it's more than they are worth; folks won't stand it. You asked too much for 'em last year."

"I know what I'm about," returned Silas, sitting in his arm-chair at the window, with dogged chin on his breast.

"You wait an' see," said Hannah. "You've jest put your own eyes out."

And after-events proved that Hannah was right. Silas Berry's cherry orchard was subjected to a species of ostracism in the village. There were no more picnics held there, people would buy none of his cherries, and he lost all the little income which he had derived from them. Hannah often twitted him with it. "You can see now that what I told you was true," said she; "you put your own eyes out." Silas would say nothing in reply; he would simply make an animal sound of defiance like a grunt in his throat, and frown. If Hannah kept on, he would stump heavily out of the room, and swing the door back with a bang.

This season Hannah had taunted her husband more than usual with his ill-judged parsimony in the matter of the cherries. The trees were quite loaded with the small green fruit, and there promised to be a very large crop. One day Silas turned on her. "You wait," said he; "mebbe I know what I'm about, more'n you think I do."

Hannah scowled with sharp interrogation at her husband's shrewdly leering face. "What be you agoin' to do?" she demanded. But she got no more out of him.

One morning about two weeks before the cherries were ripe Silas went halting in a casual way across the south yard towards his daughter Rose, who was spreading out some linen to bleach. He picked up a few stray sticks on the way, ostentatiously, as if that were his errand.

Rose was spreading out the lengths of linen in a wide sunny space just outside the shade of the cherry-trees. Her father paused, tilted his head back, and eyed the trees with a look of innocent reflection. Rose glanced at him, then she went on with her work.

"Guess there's goin' to be considerable many cherries this year," remarked her father, in an affable and confidential tone.

"I guess so," replied Rose, shortly, and she flapped out an end of the wet linen. The cherries were a sore subject with her.

"I guess there's goin' to be more than common," said Silas, still gazing up at the green boughs full of green fruit clusters.

Rose made no reply; she was down on her knees in the grass stretching the linen straight.

"I've been thinkin'," her father continued, slowly, "that—mebbe you'd like to have a little—party, an' ask some of the young folks, an' eat some of 'em when they get ripe. You could have four trees to pick off of."

"I should think we'd had enough of cherry parties," Rose cried out, bitterly.

"I didn't say nothin' about havin' 'em pay anything," said her father.

Rose straightened herself and looked at him incredulously. "Do you mean it, father?" said she.

"'Ain't I jest said you might, if you wanted to?"

"Do you mean to have them come here and not pay, father?"

"There ain't no use tryin' to sell any of 'em," replied Silas. "You can talk it over with your mother, an' do jest as you're a mind to about it, that's all. If you want to have a few of the young folks over here when them cherries are ripe, you can have four of them trees to pick off of. I ain't got no more to say about it."

Silas turned in a peremptory and conclusive manner. Rose fairly gasped as she watched his stiff one-sided progress across the yard. The vague horror of the unusual stole over her. A new phase of her father's character stood between her and all her old memories like a supernatural presence. She left the rest of the linen in the basket and sought her mother in the house. "Mother!" she called out, in a cautious voice, as soon as she entered the kitchen. Mrs. Berry's face looked inquiringly out of the pantry, and Rose motioned her back, went in herself, and shut the door.

"What be you a-shuttin' the door for?" asked her mother, wonderingly.

"I don't know what has come over father."

"What do you mean, Rose Berry? He 'ain't had another shock?"

"I'm dreadful afraid he's going to! I'm dreadful afraid something's going to happen to him!"

"I'd like to know what you mean?" Mrs. Berry was quite pale.

"Father says I can have a cherry party, and they needn't pay anything."

Her mother stared at her. "He didn't!"

"Yes, he did."

They looked in each other's eyes, with silent renewals of doubt and affirmation. Finally Mrs. Berry laughed. "H'm! Don't you see what your father's up to?" she said.

"No, I don't. I'm scared."

"You needn't be. You ain't very cute. He's an old head. He thinks if he has this cherry party for nothin' folks will overlook that other affair, an' next year they'll buy the cherries again. Mebbe he thinks they'll buy the other trees this year, after the party. How many trees did he say you could have?"

"Four. Maybe that is it."

"Of course 'tis. Your father's an old head. Well, you'd better ask 'em. They won't see through it, and it'll make things pleasanter. I've felt bad enough about it. I guess Mis' Thayer won't look down on us quite so much if we ask a party here and let 'em eat cherries for nothin'. It's more'n she'd do, I'll warrant."

"Maybe they won't any of them come," said Rose.

"H'm! Don't you worry about that. They'll come fast enough. I never see any trouble yet about folks comin' to get anything good that they didn't have to pay for."

Rose and her mother calculated how many to invite to the party. They decided to include all the available young people in Pembroke.

"We might jest as well while we're about it," said Hannah, judiciously. "There are cherries enough, and the Lord only knows when your father 'll have another freak like this. I guess it's like an eclipse of the sun, an' won't come again very soon."

Within a day or two all the young people had been bidden to the cherry party, and, as Mrs. Berry had foretold, accepted. Their indignation was not proof against the prospect of pleasure; and, moreover, they all liked Rose and William, and would not have refused on their account.

The week before the party, when the cherries were beginning to turn red, and the robins had found them out, was an arduous one to little Ezra Ray, a young brother of Tommy Ray, who tended in Silas Berry's store. He was hired for twopence to sit all day in the cherry orchard and ring a cow-bell whenever the robins made excursions into the trees. From earliest dawn when the birds were first astir, until they sought their little nests, did Ezra sit uncomfortably upon a hard peaked rock in the midst of the orchard and jingle his bell.

He was white-headed, and large of his age like his brother. His pale blue eyes were gravely vacant under his thick white thatch; his chin dropped; his mouth gaped with stolid patience. There was no mitigation for his dull task; he was not allowed to keep his vigil on a comfortable branch of a tree with the mossy trunk for a support to his back, lest he might be tempted to eat of the cherries, and turn pal of the robins instead of enemy. He dared not pull down any low bough and have a surreptitious feast, for he understood well that there were likely to be sharp eyes at the rear windows of the house, that it was always probable that old Silas Berry, of whom he was in mortal fear, might be standing at his back, and, moreover, he should be questioned, and had not falsehood for refuge, for he was a good child, and would be constrained to speak the truth.

They would not let him have a gun instead of a bell, although he pleaded hard. Could he have sat there presenting a gun like a sentry on duty, the week, in spite of discomfort and deprivations, would have been full of glory and excitement. As it was, the dulness and monotony of the jingling of the cow-bell made even his stupid childish mind dismal. All the pleasant exhilaration of youth seemed to have deserted the boy, and life to him became as inane and bovine as to the original ringer of that bell grazing all the season in her own shadow over the same pasture-ground.

And more than all, that twopence for which Ezra toiled so miserably was to go towards the weaving of a rag carpet which his mother was making, and for which she was saving every penny. He could not lay it out in red-and-white sugar-sticks at the store. He sat there all the week, and every time there was a whir of little brown wings and the darting flash of a red breast among the cherry branches he rang in frantic haste the old cow-bell. All the solace he obtained was an occasional robin-pecked cherry which he found in the grass, and then Mr. Berry questioned him severely when he saw stains around his mouth and on his fingers.

He was on hand early in the morning on the day of the cherry picnic, trudging half awake, with the taste of breakfast in his mouth, through the acres of white dewy grass. He sat on his rock until the grass was dry, and patiently jingled his cow-bell. It was to young Ezra Ray, although all unwittingly, as if he himself were assisting in the operations of nature. He watched so assiduously that it was as if he dried the dewy grass and ripened the cherries.

When the cherry party began to arrive he still sat on his rock and jingled his bell; he did not know when to stop. But his eyes were upon the assembling people rather than upon the robins. He watched the brave young men whose ignominy of boyhood was past, bearing ladders and tossing up shining tin pails as they came. He watched the girls swinging their little straw baskets daintily; his stupidly wondering eyes followed especially Rebecca Thayer. Rebecca, in her black muslin, with her sweet throat fairly dazzling above the half-low bodice, and wound about twice with a slender gold chain, with her black silk apron embroidered with red roses, and beautiful face glowing with rich color between the black folds of her hair, held the instinctive attention of the boy. He stared at her as she stood talking to another girl with her back quite turned upon all the young men, until his own sister touched him upon the shoulder with a sharp nudge of a bony little hand.