"They're all comin' troopin' in here to-morrow, an' it's goin' to take about all the little I've got left to get victuals for 'em, an' I've got to go without to-night if I starve!" she cried out quite loud and defiantly, as if her hard providence lurked within hearing in some dark recess of the room.

She raked ashes over the coals in the fireplace. "I'll go to bed an' save the fire, too," she said; "it'll take about all the wood I've got left to-morrow. I've got to heat the oven. Might as well go to bed, an' lay there forever, anyway. If I stayed up till doomsday nobody'd come."

Sylvia set the shovel back with a vicious clatter; then she struck out—like a wilful child who hurts itself because of its rage and impotent helplessness to hurt aught else—her thin, red hand against the bricks of the chimney. She looked at the bruises on it with bitter exultation, as if she saw in them some evidence of her own freedom and power, even to her own hurt.

When she went to bed she stowed away her money under the feather-bed. She could not go to sleep. Some time in the night a shutter in another room up-stairs banged. She got up, lighted the candle, and trod over the icy floors to the room relentlessly with her bare feet. There was a pane of glass broken behind the shutter, and the wind had loosened the fastening. Sylvia forced the shutter back; in a strange rage she heard another pane of glass crack. "I don't care if every pane of glass in the window is broken," she muttered, as she hooked the fastening with angry, trembling fingers.

Her thin body in its cotton night-gown, cramped with long rigors of cold, her delicate face reddened as if before a fire, her jaws felt almost locked as she went through the deadly cold of the lonely house back to bed; but that strange rage in her heart enabled her to defy it, and awakened within her something like blasphemy against life and all the conditions thereof, but never against Richard Alger. She never felt one throb of resentment against him. She even wondered, when she was back in bed, if he had bedclothing enough, if the quilts and bed-puffs that his mother had left were not worn out; her own were very thin.

The next day Sylvia heated her brick oven; she went to the store and bought materials, and made pound-cake and pies. While they were baking she ran over and invited Charlotte and her mother. She did not see Cephas; he had gone to draw some wood.

"I'd like to have him come, too," she said, as she went out; "but I dunno as he'd eat anything I've got for tea."

"Land! he eats anything when he goes out anywhere to tea," replied Mrs. Barnard. "He was over to Hannah's a while ago, an' he eat everything. He eats pie-crust with shortenin' now, anyway. He got so he couldn't stan' it without. I guess he'd like to come. He'll have to draw wood some this afternoon, but he can come in time for tea. I'll lay out his clothes on the bed for him."

"Well, have him come, then," said Sylvia. Sylvia was nearly out of the yard when Charlotte called after her: "Don't you want me to come over and help you, Aunt Sylvia?" she called out. She stood in the door with her apron flying out in the wind like a blue flag.

"No, I guess not," replied Sylvia; "I don't need any help. I ain't got much to do."

"I think Aunt Sylvia looks sick," Charlotte said to her mother when she went in.

"I thought she looked kind of peaked," said Sarah. But neither of them dreamed of the true state of affairs: how poor Sylvia Crane, half-starved and half-frozen in heart and stomach, was on the verge of bankruptcy of all her little worldly possessions.

Sylvia's sisters, practical enough in other respects, were singularly ignorant and incompetent concerning any property except the few dollars and cents in their own purses.

They had always supposed Sylvia had enough to live on, as long as she lived at all. They had a comfortable sense of generosity and self-sacrifice, since they had let her have all the old homestead after her mother's death without a word, and even against covert remonstrances on the parts of their husbands.

Silas Berry had once said out quite openly to his wife and Sarah Barnard: "That will had ought to be broke, accordin' to my way of thinkin'," and Hannah had returned with spirit: "It won't ever be broke unless it's against my will, Silas Berry. I know it seems considerable for Sylvy to have it all, but she's took care of mother all those years, an' I don't begrutch it to her, an' she's a-goin' to have it. I don't much believe Richard Alger will ever have her now she's got so old, an' she'd ought to have enough to live on the rest of her life an' keep her comfortable."

Therefore Sylvia's sisters had a conviction that she was comfortably provided with worldly gear. Mrs. Berry was even speculating upon the probability of her giving Rose something wherewith to begin house-keeping when her marriage with Tommy Ray took place.

The two sisters, with their daughters, came early that afternoon. Mrs. Berry and Rose sewed knitted lace on pillow-slips; Mrs. Barnard and Charlotte were making new shirts for Cephas; Charlotte sat by the window and set beautiful stitches in her father's linen shirt-bosoms, while her aunt Hannah's tongue pricked her ceaselessly as with small goading thorns.

"I s'pose this seems kind of natural to you, don't it, Charlotte, gettin' pillow-slips ready?" said Mrs. Berry.

"I don't know but it does," answered Charlotte, never raising her eyes from her work. Her mother flushed angrily. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then she shut it again hard.

"Let me see, how many did you make?" asked Mrs. Berry.

"She made two dozen pair," Charlotte's mother answered for her.

"An' you've got 'em all laid away, yellowin'?"

"I guess they ain't yellowed much," said Sarah Barnard.

"I don't see when you're ever goin' to use 'em."

"Mebbe there'd be chances enough to use 'em if some folks was as crazy to take up with 'em as some other folks," returned Sarah Barnard.

"I'd like to know what you mean?"

"Oh, nothin'. If folks want chances to make pillow-slips bad enough there's generally poor tools enough layin' 'round, that's all."

"I'd like to know what you mean, Sarah Barnard."

"Oh, I don't mean nothin'," answered Sarah Barnard. She glanced at her daughter Charlotte and smiled slyly, but Charlotte never returned the glance and smile. She sewed steadily. Rose colored, but she said nothing. She looked very pretty and happy, as she sat there, sewing knitted lace on her wedding-pillows; and she really was happy. Her passionate heart had really satisfied itself with the boyish lover whom she would have despised except for lack of a better. She was and would be happy enough; it was only a question of deterioration of character, and the nobility of applying to the need of love the rules of ordinary hunger and thirst, and eating contentedly the crust when one could not get the pie, of drinking the water when one could not get the wine. Contentment may be sometimes a degradation; but she was happier than she had ever been in her life, although she had a little sense of humiliation when she reflected that Tommy Ray, younger than herself, tending store under her brother, was not exactly a brilliant match for her, and that everybody in the village would think so. So she colored angrily when her aunt Sarah spoke as she did, although she said nothing. But her mother, although she had rebelled in private bitterly against her daughter's choice, was ready enough to take up the cudgels for her in public.

"Well," said Hannah Berry, "two old maids in the family is about enough, accordin' to my way of thinkin'."

"It's better to be an old maid than to marry somebody you don't want, jest for the sake of bein' married," retorted Sarah Barnard, fiercely.

The two sisters clashed like two thorny bushes of one family in a gale the whole afternoon. The two daughters sewed silently, and Sylvia knitted a stocking with scarcely a word until she arose to get tea.

Cephas and Silas both came to tea, which was served in state, with a fine linen table-cloth, and Sylvia's mother's green and white sprigged china. Nobody suspected, as they tasted the damson sauce with the thin silver spoons, as they tilted the green and white teacups to their lips, and ate the rich pound-cake and pie, what a very feast of renunciation and tragedy this was to poor Sylvia Crane. Cephas and Silas, indeed, knew that money had been advanced her by the town upon her estate, but they were far from suspecting, and, indeed, were unwilling to suspect, how nearly it was exhausted and the property lived out. It was only a meagre estimate that the town of Pembroke had made of the Crane ancestral acres. If Silas and Cephas had ever known what it was, they had dismissed it from their minds, they were interested in not knowing. Suppose their wives should want to give her a home and support.

The women knew nothing whatever.

When they went home, an hour after tea, Hannah Berry turned to Sylvia in the doorway. "I suppose you know the weddin' is comin' off pretty soon now," said she.

"Yes, I s'posed 'twas," answered Sylvia, trying to smile.

"Well, I thought I'd jest mention it, so you could get your present ready," said Hannah. She nudged Rose violently as she spoke.

"I don't care; I meant to give her a hint," she said, chuckling, when they were outside. "She can give you something jest as well as not; she might give you some silver teaspoons, or a table, or sofa. There! she bought that handsome sofa for herself a few years ago, an' she didn't need it more'n nothin' at all. I suppose she thought Richard Alger was comin' steady, but now he's stopped."

Rose was married in a few weeks. The morning of the wedding-day Sylvia went into Berry's store and called William aside.

"If you can, I wish you'd come 'round by-an'-by with your horse an' your wood-sled," said she.

"Yes, guess I can; what is it you want?" asked William, eying her curiously. She was very pale; there were red circles around her eyes, and her mouth trembled.

"Oh, it ain't anything, only a little present I wanted to send to Rose," replied Sylvia.

"Well," said William, "I'll be along by-an'-by." He looked after her in a perplexed way as she went out.

Silas was in the back of the store, and presently he came forward. "What she want you to do?" he inquired of his son.

William told him. The old man chuckled. "Hannah give her a hint 'tother day, an' I guess she took it," he said.

"I thought she looked pretty poorly," said William—"looked as if she'd been crying or something. How do you suppose that property holds out, father? I heard the town was allowing her on it."

"Oh, I guess it'll last her as long as she lives," replied Silas, gruffly. "Your mother had ought to had her thirds in it."

"I don't know about that," said William. "Aunt Sylvy had a hard time takin' care of grandmother."

"She was paid for 't," returned Silas.

"Richard Alger treated her mean."

"Guess he sat out considerable firewood an' candle-grease," assented the old man.

A customer came in then, and Ezra Ray sprang forward. He was all excited over his brother's wedding, and was tending store in his place that day. His mother was making him a new suit to wear to the wedding, and he felt as if the whole affair hung, as it were, upon the buttons of his new jacket and the straps of his new trousers.

"Guess I might as well go over to Aunt Sylvy's now as any time," said William.

"Don't see what she wanted you to fetch the horse an' sled for," ruminated Silas. "Mother thought most likely she'd give some silver teaspoons if she give anything."

William went out to the barn, put the horse in the sled, and drove down the hill towards Sylvia's. When he returned the old thin silver teaspoons of the Crane family were in his coat-pocket, and Sylvia's dearly beloved and fondly cherished hair-cloth sofa was on the sled behind him.

"What in creation did she send them old teaspoons and that old sofa for?" his mother asked, disgustedly.

"I don't know," replied William, soberly; "but I do know one thing: I hated to take them bad enough. She acted all upset over it. I think she'd better have kept her sofa and teaspoons as long as she lived."

"Course she was upset givin' away anything," scolded his mother. "It was jest like her, givin' away a passel of old truck ruther than spend any money. Well, I s'pose you may as well set that sofa in the parlor. It ain't hurt much, anyway."

Rose and her husband were to live with her parents for the present. She was married that evening. She wore a blue silk dress, and some rose-geranium blossoms and leaves in her hair. Tommy Ray sat by her side on Sylvia's sofa until the company and the minister were all there. Then they stood up and were married.

Sylvia came to the wedding in her best silk gown; she had trembled lest Richard Alger should be there, but he had not been invited. Hannah Berry cherished a deep resentment against him.

"I ain't goin' to have any man that's treated one of my folks as mean as he has set foot in my house to a weddin', not if I know it," she told Rose.

After the marriage-cake and cider were passed around, the old people sat solemnly around the borders of the rooms, and the young people played games. William and his wife were not there. Hannah had not dared to slight them, but William could not prevail upon Rebecca to go.

Barney, also, had not been invited to the wedding. Mrs. Berry had an open grudge against him on her niece's account, and a covert one on her daughter's. Hannah Berry had a species of loyalty in her nature, inasmuch as she would tolerate ill-treatment of her kin from nobody but her own self.

Charlotte Barnard came with her father and mother, and sat quietly with them all the evening. She was beginning insensibly to rather hold herself aloof from the young people, and avoid joining in their games. She felt older. People had wondered if she would not wear the dress she had had made for her own wedding, but she did not. She wore her old purple silk, which had been made over from one of her mother's, and a freshly-starched muslin collar. The air was full of the rich sweetness of cake; there was a loud discord of laughter and high shrill voices, through which yet ran a subtle harmony of mirth. Laughing faces nodded and uplifted like flowers in the merry romping throngs in the middle of the room, while the sober ones against the walls watched with grave, elderly, retrospective eyes.

As soon as she could, Sylvia Crane stole into her sister's bedroom, where the women's outside garments were heaped high on the bed, got her own, opened the side door softly, and went home. The next day she was going to the poor-house, and nobody but the three selectmen of Pembroke knew it. She had begged them, almost on her knees, to tell nobody until she was there.

That night she rolled away the guardian stone from before the door with the feeling that it was for the last time. All that night she worked. She could not go to bed, she could not sleep, and she had gone beyond any frenzy of sorrow and tears. All her blind and helpless rage against life and the obdurately beneficent force, which had been her conception of Providence, was gone. When the battle is over there is no more need for the fury of combat. Sylvia felt her battle was over, and she felt the peace of defeat.

She was to take a few necessaries to the poor-house with her; she had them to pack, and she also had some cleaning to do.

She had a vague idea that the town, which seemed to loom over her like some dreadful shadowy giant of a child's story, would sell the house, and it must be left in neat order for the inspection of seller and buyer. "I ain't goin' to have the town lookin' over the house an' sayin' it ain't kept decent," she said. So she worked hard all night, and her candle lit up first one window, then another, moving all over the house like a will-o'-the-wisp.

The man who had charge of the poor-house came for her the next morning at ten o'clock. Sylvia was all ready. At quarter past ten he drove out of the old road where the Crane house stood and down the village street. The man's name was Jonathan Leavitt. He was quite old but hearty, with a stubbly fringe of white beard around a ruddy face. He had come on a wood-sled for the greater convenience of bringing Sylvia's goods. There were a feather-bed, bolster, and pillows, tied up in an old homespun blanket, on the rear of the sled; there was also a red chest, and a great bundle of bedclothing. Sylvia sat in her best rocking-chair just behind Jonathan Leavitt, who drove standing.

"It's a pleasant day for this time of year," he observed to Sylvia when they started. Sylvia nodded assent.

Jonathan Leavitt had had a fear lest Sylvia might make a disturbance about going. Many a time had it taken hours for him to induce a poor woman to leave her own door-stone; and when at length they had set forth, it was to an accompaniment of shrill, piteous lamentations, so strained and persistent that they seemed scarcely human, and more like the cries of a scared cat being hauled away from her home. Everybody on the road had turned to look after the sled, and Jonathan Leavitt had driven on, looking straight ahead, his face screwed hard, lashing now and then his old horse, with a gruff shout. Now he felt relieved and grateful to Sylvia for going so quietly. He was disposed to be very friendly to her.

"You'd better keep your rockin'-chair kind of stiddy," he said, when they turned the corner into the new road, and the chair oscillated like an uneasy berth at sea.

Sylvia sat up straight in the chair. She had on her best bonnet and shawl, and her worked lace veil over her face. Her poor blue eyes stared out between the black silk leaves and roses. If she had been a dead woman and riding to her grave, and it had been possible for her to see as she was borne along the familiar road, she would have regarded everything in much the same fashion that she did now. She looked at everything—every tree, every house and wall—with a pang of parting forever. She felt as if she should never see them again in their old light.

The poor-house was three miles out of the village; the road lay past Richard Alger's house. When they drew near it Sylvia bent her head low and averted her face; she shut her eyes behind the black roses. She did not want to know when she passed the house. An awful shame that Richard should see her riding past to the poor-house seized upon her.

The wood-sled went grating on, a chain rattled; she calculated that they were nearly past when there was a jerk, and Jonathan Leavitt cried "Hullo!"

"Where are you going?" shouted another voice. Sylvia knew it. Her heart pounded. She turned her face farther to one side, and did not open her eyes.

Richard Alger came plunging down out of his yard. His handsome face was quite pale under a slight grizzle of beard, he was in his shirt-sleeves, he had on no dicky or stock, and his sinewy throat showed.

"Where you goin'?" he gasped out again, as he came up to the sled.

"I'm a takin' Sylvy home. Why?" inquired Jonathan Leavitt, with a dazed look.

"Home? What are you headed this way for? What are all those things on the sled?"

"She's lived out her place, an' the town's jest took it; guess you didn't know, Richard," said Jonathan Leavitt. His eyes upon the other man were half shrewdly inquiring, half bewildered.

Sylvia never turned her head. She sat with her eyes closed behind her veil.



"Just turn that sled 'round," said Richard Alger.

"Turn the sled 'round?"

"Yes, turn it 'round!" Richard himself grasped the bay horse by the bit as he spoke. "Back, back!" he shouted.

"What are you doin' on, Richard?" cried the old man; but he pulled his right rein mechanically, and the sled slewed slowly and safely around.

Richard jumped on and stood just beside Sylvia, holding to a stake. "Where d'ye want to go?" asked the old man.

"Back."

"But the town—"

"I'll take care of the town."

Jonathan Leavitt drove back. Sylvia opened her eyes a little way, and saw Richard's back. "You'll catch cold without your coat," she half gasped.

"No, I sha'n't," returned Richard, but he did not turn his head.

Sylvia did not say any more. She was trembling so that her very thoughts seemed to waver. They turned the corner of the old road, and drove up to her old house. Richard stepped off the sled, and held out his hands to Sylvia. "Come, get off," said he.

"I dunno about this," said Jonathan Leavitt. "I'm willin' as far as I'm concerned, Richard, but I've had my instructions."

"I tell you I'll take care of it," said Richard Alger. "I'll settle all the damages with the town. Come, Sylvia, get off."

And Sylvia Crane stepped weakly off the wood-sled, and Richard Alger helped her into the house. "Why, you can't hardly walk," said he, and Sylvia had never heard anything like the tenderness in his tone. He bent down and rolled away the stone. Sylvia had rolled it in front of the door herself, when she went out, as she supposed, for the last time. Then he opened the door, and took hold of her slender shawled arm, and half lifted her in.

"Go in an' sit down," said he, "while we get the things in."

Sylvia went mechanically into her clean, fireless parlor; it was the room where she had always received Richard. She sat down in a flag-bottomed chair and waited.

Richard and Jonathan Leavitt came into the house tugging the feather-bed between them. "We'll put it in the kitchen," she heard Richard say. They brought in the chest and the bundle of bedding. Then Richard came into the parlor carrying the rocking-chair before him. "You want this in here, don't you?" he said.

"It belongs here," said Sylvia, faintly. Jonathan Leavitt gathered up his reins and drove out of the yard.

Richard set down the chair; then he went and stood before Sylvia.

"Look here, Sylvia," said he. Then he stopped and put his hands over his face. His whole frame shook. Sylvia stood up. "Don't, Richard," she said.

"I never had any idea of this," said Richard Alger, with a great groaning sob.

"Don't you feel so bad, Richard," said Sylvia.

Suddenly Richard put is arm around Sylvia, and pulled her close to him. "I'll look out and do better by you the rest of your life, anyhow," he said. He took hold of Sylvia's veil and pulled it back. Her pale face drooped before him.

"You look—half—starved," he groaned. Sylvia looked up and saw tears on his rough cheeks.

"Don't you feel bad, Richard," she said again.

"I'd ought to feel bad," said Richard, fiercely.

"I couldn't help it, that night you come an' found me gone. It was that night Charlotte had the trouble with Barney. Sarah, she wouldn't let me come home any sooner. I was dreadful upset about it."

"I've been meaner than sin, an' I don't know as it makes it any better, because I couldn't seem to help it," said Richard Alger. "I didn't forget you a single minute, Sylvia, an' I was awful sorry for you, an' there wasn't a Sabbath night that I didn't want to come more than I wanted to go to Heaven! But I couldn't, I couldn't nohow. I've always had to travel in tracks, an' no man livin' knows how deep a track he's in till he gets jolted out of it an' can't get back. But I've got into a track now, an' I'll die before I get out of it. There ain't any use in your lookin' at me, Sylvia, but if you can make up your mind to have me, I'll try my best, an' do all I can to make it all up to you in the time that's left."

"I'm afraid you've had a dreadful hard time, livin' alone so long, an' tryin' to do for yourself," said Sylvia, pitifully.

"I'm glad I have," replied Richard, grimly.

He clasped Sylvia closer; her best bonnet was all crushed against his breast. He looked around over her head, as if searching for something.

"Where's the sofa gone?" he asked.

"I gave it to Rose for a weddin' present. I thought I shouldn't ever need it," Sylvia murmured.

"Well, I've got one, it ain't any matter," said Richard.

He moved towards the rocking-chair, drawing Sylvia gently along with him.

"Sit down, Sylvia," said he, softly.

"No, you sit down in the rocking-chair, Richard," said Sylvia. She reached out and pulled a flag-bottomed chair close and sat down herself. Richard sat in the rocking-chair.

Sylvia untied her bonnet, took it off, and straightened it. Richard watched her. "I want you to have a white bonnet," said he.

"I'm too old, Richard," Sylvia replied, blushing.

"No, you ain't," he said, defiantly; "you've got to have a white bonnet."

Sylvia looked in his face—and indeed hers looked young enough for a white bonnet; it flushed and lit up, like an old flower revived in a new spring.

Richard leaned over towards her, and the two old lovers kissed each other. Richard moved his chair close to hers, and Sylvia felt his arm coming around her waist. She sat still. "Put your head down on my shoulder," whispered Richard.

And Sylvia laid her head on Richard's shoulder. She felt as if she were dreaming of a dream.



Chapter XIII

When Richard Alger went home he wore an old brown shawl of Sylvia's over his shoulders. He had demurred a little. "I can't go down the street with your shawl on, Sylvia," he had pleaded, but Sylvia insisted.

"You'll catch your death of cold, goin' home in your shirt-sleeves," she said. "They won't know it's my shawl. Men wear shawls."

"You've worn this ever since I've known you, Sylvia, an' I ain't given to catchin' cold easy," said Richard almost pitifully. But he stood still and let Sylvia pin the shawl around his neck. Sylvia seemed to have suddenly acquired a curious maternal authority over him, and he submitted to it as if it were merely natural that he should.

Richard Alger went meekly down the road, wearing the old brown shawl that had often draped Sylvia Crane's slender feminine shoulders when she walked abroad, since she was a young girl. Sylvia had always worn it corner-wise, but she had folded it square for him as making it more of a masculine garment. Two corners waved out stiffly from his square shoulders. He tried to swing his arms unconcernedly under it; once the fringe hit his hand and he jumped.

He was shame-faced when he struck out into the main road, but he did not dream of taking off the shawl. A very passion of obedience and loyalty to Sylvia had taken possession of him. With every submission after long persistency, there is a strong reverse action, as from the sudden cessation of any motion. Richard now yielded in more marked measure than he had opposed. He had borne with his whimsical will against all his sweetheart's dearest wishes during the better part of her life; now he would wear any insignia of bondage if she bade him.

He had gone a short distance on the main road when he met Hannah Berry. She was hurrying along, her face was quite red, and he could hear her pant as she drew near. She looked at him sharply, she fairly narrowed her eyes over the shawl. "Good-mornin'," said she.

Richard said "Good-morning," gruffly. The shawl blew out against Hannah's shoulder as she passed him. She turned about and stared after him, and he knew it. He went on with dogged chin in the folds of the shawl.

Hannah Berry hurried along to Sylvia Crane's. When she opened the door Sylvia was just coming out of the parlor, and the two sisters met in the entry with a kind of shock.

"Oh, it's you," murmured Sylvia. Sylvia cast down her eyes before her sister. She tried not to smile. Her hair was tumbled and there were red spots on her cheeks.

"Has he been here all this time?" demanded Hannah.

"He's just gone."

"I met him out here. What in creation did you rig him up in your old shawl for, Sylvy Crane?"

"He was in his shirt-sleeves, an' I wasn't goin' to have him catch his death of cold," replied Sylvia with dignity.

"In his shirt-sleeves!"

"Yes, he run out just as he was."

"Land sakes!" said Hannah. The two women looked at each other. Suddenly Hannah threw out her arms from under her shawl, and clasped Sylvia. "Oh, Sylvy," she sobbed out, "to think you was settin' out for the poor-house this mornin', an' we havin' a weddin' last night, an' never knowin' it! Why didn't you say anythin' about it, why didn't you, Sylvy?"

"I knew you couldn't do anything, Hannah."

"Knew I couldn't do anything! Do you suppose me or Sarah would have let all the sister we've got go to the poor-house whilst we had a roof over our heads? We'd took you right in, either one of us."

"I was afraid Silas an' Cephas wouldn't be willin'."

"I guess they'd had to be willin'. I told Silas just now that if Richard Alger didn't come forward like a man, you was comin' to my house, an' have the best we've got as long as you lived. Silas, he said he thought you'd ought to earn your own livin', an' I told him there wa'n't any chance for a woman like you to earn your livin' in Pembroke, that you could earn your livin' enough livin' at your own sister's. Oh, Sylvy, I can't stand it, when I think of your startin' out that way, an' never sayin' a word." Hannah sobbed convulsively on her sister's shoulder. There were tears in Sylvia's eyes, but her face above her sister's head was radiant. "Don't, Hannah," she said. "It's all over now, you know."

"Is he—goin' to have you now—Sylvy?"

"I guess so, maybe," said Sylvia.

"I suppose you'll go to his house, this is so run down."

"He's goin' to fix this one up."

"You think you'd rather live here, then? Well, I s'pose I should. I s'pose he's goin' to buy it. The town hadn't ought to ask much. Sylvy Crane, I can't get it through my head, nohow."

"What?" said Sylvia.

"How you run out this nice place so quick. I thought an' Sarah thought you'd got enough to last you jest as long as you lived, an' have some left to leave then."

Hannah stood back and looked at her sister sharply.

"I've always been as savin' as I knew how," said Sylvia.

"Well, I dunno but you have. You got that sofa, that cost considerable. I shouldn't have thought you'd got that, if you'd known how things were, Sylvy."

"I kinder felt as if I needed it."

"Well, I guess you might have got along without that, anyhow. Richard's got one, ain't he?"

"Yes, he says he has."

"I thought I remembered his mother's buyin' one just before his father died. Well, you'll have his sofa, then; if I remember right, it's a better one than yours that you give Rose. Now, Sylvy Crane, you jest put on your hood an' shawl, an' come home with me, an' have some dinner. Have you got anything in the house to eat?"

"I've got a few things," replied Sylvia, evasively.

"What?"

"Some potatoes an' apples."

"Potatoes an' apples!" Hannah began to sob again. "To think of your comin' to this," she wailed. "My own sister not havin' anything in the house to eat, an' settin' out for the poor-house, an' everybody in town knowin' it."

"Don't feel bad about it, Hannah; it's all over now," said Sylvia.

"Don't feel bad about it! I guess you'd feel bad about it if you was in my place," returned Hannah. "I s'pose you think now you've got Richard Alger that there's nothin' else makes any odds. I guess I've got some feelin's. Get your hood and shawl, now do; dinner was all ready when I come away."

"I guess I'd better not, Hannah," said Sylvia. It seemed to her that she never would want anything to eat again. She wanted to be alone in her old house, and hug her happiness to her heart, whose starvation had caused her more agony than any other. Now that was appeased she cared for nothing else.

"You come right along," said Hannah. "I've got a nice roast spare-rib an' turnip an' squash, an' you're goin' to come an' have some of it."

When Hannah and Sylvia got out on the main road, they heard Sarah Barnard's voice calling them. She was hurrying down the hill. Cephas had just come home with the news. Jonathan Leavitt had spread it over the village from the nucleus of the store where he had stopped on his way home.

Sarah Barnard sat down on the snowy stone-wall among the last year's blackberry vines, and cried as if her heart would break. Finally Hannah, after joining with her awhile, turned to and comforted her.

"Land sake, don't take on so, Sarah Barnard!" said she; "it's all over now. Sylvy's goin' to marry Richard Alger, an' there ain't a man in Pembroke any better off, unless it's Squire Payne. She's goin' to have him right off, an' he's goin' to buy the house an' fix it up, an' she's goin' to have all his mother's nice things, an' she's comin' home with me now, an' have some nice roast spare-rib an' turnip. There ain't nothin' to take on about."

Hannah fairly pulled Sarah off the stone-wall. "Sylvy an' me have got to go," said she. "You come down this afternoon, an' we'll all go over to her house, an' talk it over. I s'pose Richard will come to-night. I hope he'll shave first, an' put on his coat. I never see such a lookin' sight as he was when I met him jest now."

"I didn't see as he looked very bad," said Sylvia, with dignity.

"It seems as if it would kill me jest to think of it," sobbed Sarah Barnard, turning tremulously away.

"Don't you feel bad about it any longer, Sarah," Sylvia said, half absently. Her hair blew out wildly from under her hood over her flushed cheeks; she smiled as if at something visible, past her sister, and past everything around her.

"I tell you there ain't nothin' to be killed about!" Hannah called after Sarah; she caught hold of Sylvia's arm. "Sarah always was kind of hystericky," said she. "That spare-rib will be all dried up, an' I wouldn't give a cent for it, if you don't come along."

Richard Alger and Sylvia Crane were married very soon. There was no wedding, and people were disappointed about that. Hannah Berry tried to persuade Sylvia to have one. "I'm willin' to make the cake," said she. "I've jest been through one weddin', but I'll do it. If I'd been goin' with a feller as long as you have with him, I wouldn't get cheated out of a weddin', anyhow. I'd have a weddin' an' I'd have cake, an' I'd ask folks, especially after what's happened. I'd let 'em see I wa'n't quite so far gone, if I had set out for the poor-house once. I'd have a weddin'. Richard's got money enough. I had real good-luck with Rose's cake, an' I ain't afraid to try yours. I guess I should make it a little mite stiffer than I did hers."

But Sylvia was obdurate. She did not say much, but she went her own way. She had gained a certain quiet decision and dignity which bewildered everybody. Her sisters had dimly realized that there was something about her out of plumb, as it were. Her nature had been warped to one side by one concentrated and unsatisfied desire. "Seems to me, sometimes, as if Sylvy was kind of queer," Hannah Berry often said. "I dunno but she's kinder turned on Richard Alger," Sarah would respond. Now she seemed suddenly to have regained her equilibrium, and no longer slanted doubtfully across her sisters' mental horizons.

She and Richard went to the minister's house early one Sabbath morning, and were married. Then they went to meeting, Sylvia on Richard's arm. They sat side by side in the Alger pew; it was on the opposite side of the meeting-house from Sylvia's old pew. It seemed to her as if she would see her old self sitting there alone, as of old, if she looked across. She fixed her eyes straight ahead, and never glanced at Richard by her side. She held her white-bonneted head up like some gentle flower which had sprung back to itself after a hard wind. She had a new white bridal bonnet, as Richard had wished; it was trimmed with white plumes and ribbons, and she wore a long white-worked veil over her face. The wrought net-work, as delicate as frost, softened all the hard lines and fixed tints, and gave to her face an illusion of girlhood. She wore the two curls over her cheeks. Richard had asked her why she didn't curl her hair as she used to do.

All the people saw Sylvia's white bonnet; it seemed to turn their eyes like a brilliant white spot, which reflected all the light in the meeting-house. But there were a few women who eyed more sharply Sylvia's wedding-gown and mantilla, for she wore the very ones which poor Charlotte Barnard had made ready for her own bridal. Sylvia was just about her niece's height; the gown had needed a little taking in to fit her thinner form, and that was all.

Charlotte's mother had brought them over to Sylvia's one night, all nicely folded in white linen towels.

"Charlotte wants you to have 'em; she says she won't ever need 'em, poor child!" she said, in response to Sylvia's remonstrances. Mrs. Barnard's eyes were red, as if she had been crying. It had apparently been harder for her to give up the poor slighted wedding-clothes than for her daughter. Charlotte had not shed a tear when she took them out of the chest and shook off the sprigs of lavender which she had laid over them; but it seemed to her that she could smell that faint elusive breath of lavender across the meeting-house when Sylvia came in, and the rustle of her bridal-gown was as loud in her ears as if she herself wore it.

"Somebody might just as well have them, and have some good of them," she had told her mother, and she spoke as if they were the garments of some one who was dead.

"Seems to me, as much as they cost, you'd ought to wear 'em yourself," said her mother.

"I never shall," Charlotte said, firmly; "and they might just as well do somebody some good." Charlotte's New England thrift and practical sense stretched her sentiment on the rack, and she never made a sound.

Barney, watching out from his window that Sunday, caught a flash of green and purple from Sylvia's silken skirt as she turned the corner of the old road with Richard. "She's got on Charlotte's wedding-dress. She's—given it to her," he said, with a gasp. He had never forgotten it since the day Charlotte had shown it to him. He had pictured her in it, hundreds of times, to his own delight and torment. He had a fierce impulse to rush out and strip his Charlotte's wedding-clothes from this other bride's back.

"She's gone and given it away, and she hasn't got a good silk dress herself; she's wearing her old cloak to meeting," he half sobbed to himself. He wondered piteously, thinking of his savings and of his property since his father's death, if he might not, at least, buy Charlotte a new silk dress and a mantilla. "I don't believe she'd be mad," he said; "but I'm afraid her father wouldn't let her wear it."

The more he thought of it the more it seemed as if he could not bear it, unless he could buy Charlotte the silk dress. "Her clothes ain't as good as mine," he said, and he thought of his best blue broadcloth suit, and his flowered vest and silk hat. It seemed to him that with all the terrible injury he was doing Charlotte, he also injured her by having better clothes than she, and that that was something which might be set right.

As Barney sat by his window that Sunday afternoon he saw a man coming down the hill. He watched him idly, then his heart leaped and he leaned forward. The man advanced with a careless, stately swing, his head was thrown back, his mulberry-colored coat had a sheen like a leaf in the sun. The man was Thomas Payne. Barney turned white as he watched him. He had not known he was in town, and his jealous heart at once whispered that he had come to see Charlotte. Thomas Payne came opposite the house, then passed out of sight. Barney sat with staring eyes full of miserable questioning upon the road. Had he been to see Charlotte? he speculated. He had come from that direction; but Barney remembered, with a sigh of hope, that Squire Payne had a sister, an old maiden lady, who lived a half-mile beyond Charlotte. Perhaps Thomas Payne had been to see his aunt.



All the rest of the day Barney was in an agony of doubt and unrest over the unsettled question. He had been living lately in a sort of wretched peace of remorse and misery; now it was rudely shaken. He walked the floor; at night he could not sleep. He seemed to be in a very torture-chamber of his own making, and the tortures were worse than any enemies could have devised. Suppose Thomas Payne was sitting up with Charlotte this Sunday night. Once he thought, wildly, of going up the hill to see if there was a light in her parlor, but it seemed to him as if the doubt was more endurable than the certainty might be. Suppose Thomas Payne was sitting up with Charlotte; he called to mind all her sweet ways. Suppose she was looking and speaking to Thomas Payne in this way or that way; his imagination threw out pictures before him upon which he could not close his eyes. He saw Thomas Payne's face all glowing with triumph, he saw Charlotte's with the old look that she had worn for him. Charlotte's caresses had been few and maidenly; they all came into his mind like stings. He knew just how she would put her tender arm around this other man's neck, how she would lift grave, willing lips to his. He wished that they had never been for him, for all they seemed worth to him now was this bitter knowledge. His fancy led him on and on to his own torment. There was a bridal mist around Charlotte. He followed the old courses of his own dreams, after his memories were passed, and they caused him worse agony.

The next morning Barney went to the store. It was absolutely necessary for him to go, but he shunned everybody. He had a horrible fear lest somebody should say, "Hallo, Barney, know Thomas Payne's goin' to marry your old girl?" He had planned the very words, and the leer of sly exultation that would accompany it.

But he made his purchase and went out, and nobody spoke to him. He had not seen Thomas Payne in the back part of the store behind the stove. Presently Thomas got up and lounged leisurely out through the store, exchanging a word with one and another on his way. When he got out Barney was going down the road quite a way ahead of him. Thomas Payne kept on in his tracks. There was another man coming towards him, and presently he stood aside to let him pass. "Good-day, Royal," said Thomas Payne.

"Good-day, Thomas," returned the other. "When d'ye get home?"

"Day before yesterday. How are you this winter, Royal?"

"Well, I'm pretty fair to middlin'." The man's face, sunken in his feeble chest far below the level of Thomas's eyes, looked up at him with a sort of whimsical patience. His back was bent like a bow; he had had curvature of the spine for years, from a fall when a young man.

"Glad to hear that," returned Thomas. The man passed him, walking as if he were vainly trying to straighten himself at every step. He held his knees stiff and threw his elbows back, but his back still curved pitifully, although it seemed as if he were half cheating himself into the belief that he was walking as straight as other men.

Thomas walked on rapidly, lessening the distance between himself and Barney. As he went on he began to have a curious fancy, which he could hardly persuade himself was a fancy. It seemed to him that Barney Thayer was walking like the man whom he had just met, that his back had that same terrible curve.

Thomas Payne stared in strange bewilderment at Barney's back. "It can't be that he has spine disease, that he has got hurt in any way," he thought to himself. The purpose with which he had started out rather paled in his mind. He walked more rapidly. It certainly seemed to him that Barney's back was bent. He got within hailing distance and called out.

"Hallo!" cried Thomas Payne.

Barney turned around, and it seemed as if he turned with the feeble, crooked motion of the other man. He saw Thomas Payne, and his face was ghastly white, but he stood still and waited.

"How are you?" Thomas said, gruffly, as he came up.

"How are you, Thomas?" returned Barney. He looked at Thomas with a dogged expectancy. He thought he was going to tell him that he was to marry Charlotte.

But Thomas was surveying him still in that strange bewilderment. "Look here, Barney," said he, bluntly, "have you been sick? I haven't heard of it."

"No, I haven't," replied Barney, wonderingly.

Thomas's eyes were fixed upon his back. "I didn't know but you had got hurt or something," said he.

Barney shook his head. Thomas thought to himself that his back was certainly curved. "I guess I'll walk along with you a little way," said he; "I've got something I wanted to say. For God's sake, Barney, you are sick!"

"No, I ain't sick."

"You are white as death."

"There's nothing the matter with me," Barney half gasped. He turned and walked on, and his back still bent like a bow to Thomas Payne's eyes.

Thomas went on silently until they had passed a house just beyond. Then he stopped again. "Look here, Barney," said he.

"Well," said Barney. He stopped, but he did not turn or face Thomas. He only presented to him that curved, or semblance of a curved, back.

"I want to speak to you about Charlotte Barnard," said Thomas Payne, abruptly. Barney waited without a word.

"I suppose you'll think it's none of my business, and in one way it isn't," said Thomas, "but I am going to say it for her sake; I have made up my mind to. It seems to me it's time, if anybody cares anything about her. What are you treating Charlotte Barnard so for, Barnabas Thayer? It's time you gave an account to somebody, and you can give it to me."

Barney did not answer.

"Speak, you miserable coward!" shouted Thomas Payne, with a sudden threatening motion of his right arm.

Then Barney turned, and Thomas started back at the sight of his face. "I can't help it," he said.

"Can't help it, you—"

"I can't, before God, Thomas."

"Why not?"

Barney raised his right hand and pointed past Thomas. "You—met—Royal Bennet just—now," he gasped, hoarsely.

Thomas nodded.

"You—saw—his—back?"

"Yes."

"Well, something like that ails me. I—can't help it—before God."

"You don't mean—" Thomas said, and stopped, looking at Barney's back.

"I mean that's why I can't—help it."

"Have you hurt your back?" Thomas asked, in a subdued tone.

"I've hurt my soul," said Barney. "It happened that Sunday night years ago. I—can't get over it. I am bent like his back."

"I should think you'd better get over it, then, if that's all," Thomas Payne said, roughly.

"I—can't, any more than he can."

"Do you mean your back's hurt? For God's sake talk sense, Barney!" Thomas cried out, in bewilderment.

"It's more than my back; it's me."

Thomas stared at Barney; a horror as of something uncanny and abnormal stole over him. Was the man's back curved, or had he by some subtle vision a perception of some terrible spiritual deformity, only symbolized by a curved spine? In a minute he gave an impatient stamp, and tried to shake himself free from the vague pity and horror which the other had aroused.

"Do you know that you are ruining the life of the best woman that ever lived?" he demanded, fiercely.

Barney looked at him, and suddenly there was a flash as of something noble in his face.

"Look here, Thomas," he said, brokenly, in hoarse gasps. "Last night I—went mad, almost, because—I thought—maybe you'd been to see—her. I—saw you coming down the hill. I thought—I'd die thinking of—you—with her. I can't tell you—what I've been through, what I've suffered, and—what I suffer right along. I know I ain't to be pitied. I know—there ain't any pity—anywhere for anything—like this. I don't pity—myself. But it's awful. If you could get a sight of it, you'd know."

Again to Thomas Payne, looking at the other, it was as if he saw a pale agonized face staring up at him from the midst of a curved mass of deformity. He shuddered.

"I don't know what to make of you, Barney Thayer," he said, looking away.

"There's one thing—I want to say," Barney went on. "I think there's enough of a man left in me—I—think I've got strength enough to say it. She—ought to be happy. I don't want her—wasting her whole life—God knows—I don't—no matter what it does—to me. I—wish— See here, Thomas. I know you—like her. Maybe she'll—turn to you. It seems as if she must. I hope you will—oh, for God's sake, be—good to her, Thomas!"

Thomas Payne's face was as white as Barney's. He turned to go. "There's no use talking this way. You know Charlotte Barnard as well as I do," he said. "You know she's one of the women that never love any man but one. I don't want another man's wife, if she'd have me." Suddenly he faced Barney again. "For God's sake, Barney," he cried out, "be a man and go back to her, and marry her!"

Barney shook his head; with a kind of a sob he turned around and went his way without another word. Thomas Payne said no more; he stared after Barney's retreating figure, and again the look of bewilderment and horror was in his face.

That afternoon he asked his father, with a casual air, if he had heard anything about Barney Thayer getting his back injured in any way.

"Why, no, I can't say as I have," returned the squire.

"I saw him this morning, and I thought his back looked as if it was growing like Royal Bennet's. I dare say I imagined it," said Thomas. Then he went out of the room whistling.

But, during his few weeks' stay in Pembroke, he put the same question to one and another, with varying results. Some said at once, with a sudden look of vague horror, that it was so. That Barney Thayer was indeed growing deformed; that they had noticed it. Others scouted the idea. "Saw him this morning, and he's as straight as he ever was," they said.

Whether Barney Thayer's back was, indeed, bowed into that terrible spinal curve or not, Thomas Payne could not tell by any agreement of witnesses. If some, gifted with acute spiritual insight, really perceived that dreadful warping of a diseased will, and clothed it with a material image for their own grosser senses; or if Barney, through dwelling upon his own real but hidden infirmity, had actually come unconsciously to give it a physical expression, and walked at times through the village with his back bent like his spirit, although not diseased, Thomas Payne could only speculate. He finally began to adopt the latter belief, as he himself, sometimes on meeting Barney, thought that he walked as erect as he ever had.

Thomas Payne stayed several weeks in Pembroke, and he did not go to see Charlotte. Once he met her in the street, and stopped and shook hands with gay heartiness.

"He's got over caring about me," Charlotte thought to herself with a strange pang, which shocked and shamed her. "Most likely he's got somebody out West, where he is," she said to herself firmly; that she ought to be glad if he had, and that she was; and yet she was not, although she never owned it to herself, and was stanchly loyal to her old love.

Charlotte herself often fancied uneasily that Barney's back was growing like Royal Bennet's. She watched him furtively when she could. Then she would say to herself, another time, that she must have imagined it.

Thomas Payne went away the first of May. That evening Charlotte sat on the door-step in the soft spring twilight. Her mother had just come home from her sister Hannah Berry's. "Thomas Payne went this afternoon," her mother said, standing before her.

"Did he?" said Charlotte.

"You might have had him if you hadn't stuck to a poor stick that ain't fit to tie your shoes up!" Sarah cried out, with sudden bitterness. Her voice sounded like Hannah Berry's. Charlotte knew that was just what her aunt Hannah had said about it.

"I don't ask him to tie my shoes up," returned Charlotte.

"You can stan' up for him all you want to," said her mother. "You know he's a poor tool, an' he's treatin' you mean. You know he can't begin to come up to a young man like Thomas Payne."

"Thomas Payne don't want me, and I don't want him; don't talk any more about it, mother."

"I think somebody ought to talk about it," said her mother, and she pushed roughly past Charlotte into the house.

Charlotte sat on the door-step a long while. "If Thomas Payne has got anybody out West, I guess she'll be glad to see him," she thought. The fancy pained her, and yet she seemed to see Thomas Payne and Barney side by side, the one like a young prince—handsome and stately, full of generous bravery—the other vaguely crouching beneath some awful deformity, pitiful yet despicable in the eyes of men, and her whole soul cleaved to her old lover. "What we've got is ours," she said to herself.

As she sat there a band of children went past, with a shrill, sweet clamor of voices. They were out hanging May-baskets and bunches of anemones. That was the favorite sport of the village children during the month of May. The woods were full of soft, innocent, seeking faces, bending over the delicate bells nodding in the midst of whorls of dark leaves. Every evening, after sundown, there were mysterious bursts of laughter and tiny scamperings around doors, and great balls of bloom swinging from the latchets when they were opened; but no person in sight, only soft gurgles of mirth and delight sounded around a corner of darkness.

After Charlotte went to bed that night she thought she heard somebody at the south door. "It is the children with some may-flowers," she thought. But presently she reflected that it was very late for the children to be out.

After a little while she got up, and stole down-stairs to the door, feeling her way through the dark house.

She opened the south door cautiously, and put her hand out. There were no flowers swinging from the latch as she half expected. Her bare feet touched something on the door-step; she stooped, and there was a great package.

Charlotte took it up, and went noiselessly back to her room with it. She lighted a candle, and unfastened the paper wrappings. She gave a little cry. There were yards of beautiful silk shimmering with lilac and silver and rose-color, and there was also a fine lace mantle.

Charlotte looked at them; she was quite pale and trembling. She folded the silk and lace again carefully, and put them in a chest out of sight. Then she went back to bed, and lay there crying wildly.

"Poor Barney! poor Barney!" she sobbed to herself.

The next evening, after Cephas and Sarah had gone to bed, Charlotte crept out of the house with the package under her shawl. It was still early. She ran nearly all the way to Barney Thayer's house; she was afraid of meeting somebody, but she did not.

She knocked softly on Barney's door, and heard him coming to open it at once. When he saw her standing there he gave a great start, and did not say anything. Charlotte thought he did not recognize her in the dusk.

"It's me, Barney," she said.

"I know you," said Barney. She held out the package to him. "I've brought this back," said she.

Barney made no motion to take it from her.

"I can't take it," she said, firmly.

Suddenly Barney threw up his hands over his face. "Can't you take just that much from me, Charlotte? Can't you let me do as much as that for you?" he groaned out.

"No, I can't," said Charlotte. "You must take it back, Barney."

"Oh, Charlotte, can't you—take that much from me?"

"I can take nothing from you as things are," Charlotte replied.

"I wanted you to have a dress. I saw you had given the other away. I didn't think—there was any harm in buying it for you, Charlotte."

"It isn't your place to buy dresses for me as things are," said Charlotte. She extended the package, and he took it, as if by force. She heard him sob.

"You must never try to do anything like this again," she said. "I want you to understand it, Barney."

Then she went away, and left him standing there holding his discarded gift.



Chapter XIV

After a while the village people ceased to have the affairs of Barney Thayer and Charlotte Barnard particularly upon their minds. As time went on, and nothing new developed in the case, they no longer dwelt upon it. Circumstances, like people, soon show familiar faces, and are no longer stared after and remarked. The people all became accustomed to Barney living alone in his half-furnished house season after season, and to Charlotte walking her solitary maiden path. They seldom spoke of it among themselves; sometimes, when a stranger came to town, they pointed out Barney and Charlotte as they would have any point of local interest.

"Do you see that house?" a woman bent on hospitable entertainment said as she drove a matronly cousin from another village down the street; "the one with the front windows boarded up, without any step to the front door? Well, Barney Thayer lives there all alone. He's old Caleb Thayer's son, all the son that's left; the other one died. There was some talk of his mother's whippin' him to death. She died right after, but they said afterwards that she didn't, that he run away one night, an' went slidin' downhill, an' that was what killed him; he'd always had heart trouble. I dunno; I always thought Deborah Thayer was a pretty good woman, but she was pretty set. I guess Barney takes after her. He was goin' with Charlotte Barnard years ago—I guess 'twas as much as nine or ten years ago, now—an' they were goin' to be married. She was all ready—weddin'-dress an' bonnet an' everything—an' this house was 'most done an' ready for them to move into; but one Sunday night Barney he went up to see Charlotte, an' he got into a dispute with her father about the 'lection, an' the old man he ordered Barney out of the house, an' Barney he went out, an' he never went in again—couldn't nobody make him. His mother she talked; it 'most killed her; an' I guess Charlotte said all she could, but he wouldn't stir a peg.

"He went right to livin' in his new house, an' he lives there now; he ain't married, an' Charlotte ain't. She's had chances, too. Squire Payne's son, he wanted her bad."

The visiting cousin's mild, interrogative face peered out around the black panel of the covered wagon at Barney's poor house; her spectacles glittered at it in the sun. "I want to know!" said she, with the expression of strained, entertained amiability which she wore through her visit.

When they passed the Barnard house the Pembroke woman partly drew rein again; the old horse meandered in a zigzag curve, with his head lopping. "That's where Charlotte Barnard lives," she said. Suddenly she lowered her voice. "There she is now, out in the yard," she whispered.

Again the visiting cousin peered out. "She's good-lookin', ain't she?" she remarked, cautiously viewing Charlotte's straight figure and fair face as she came towards them out of the yard.

"She ain't so good-lookin' as she used to be," rejoined the other woman. "I guess she's goin' down to her aunt Sylvy's—Sylvy Crane as was. She married Richard Alger a while ago, after she'd been goin' with him over twenty year. He's fixed up the old Crane place. It got dreadful run down, an' Sylvy she actually set out for the poor-house, an' Richard he stopped Jonathan Leavitt, he was carryin' of her over there, an' he brought her home, an' married her right off. That brought him to the point. Sylvy lives on the old road; we can drive round that way when we go home, an' I'll show you the place."

When they presently drove down the green length of the old road, the visiting cousin spied interestedly at Sylvia's house and Sylvia's own delicate profile frilled about with lace, drooping like the raceme of some white flower in one of the windows.

"That's her at the window," whispered the Pembroke woman, "an' there's Richard out there in the bean-poles." Just then Richard peered out at them from the green ranks of the beans at the sound of their wheels, and the Pembroke woman nodded, with a cough.

They drove slowly out of the old road into the main-travelled one, and presently passed the old Thayer house. A woman's figure fled hurriedly up the yard into the house as they approached. There was a curious shrinking look about her as she fled, her very clothes, her muslin skirts, her light barege shawl, her green bonnet, seemed to slant away before the eyes of the two women who were watching her.

The Pembroke woman leaned close to her cousin's ear, and whispered with a sharp hiss of breath. The cousin started and colored red all over her matronly face and neck. She stared with a furtive shamed air at poor Rebecca hastening into her house. The door closed after her with a quick slam.

It was always to Rebecca, years beyond her transgression, admitted ostensibly to her old standing in the village, as if an odor of disgrace and isolation still clung to her, shaken out from her every motion from the very folds of her garments. It came in her own nostrils wherever she went, like a miserable emanation of her own personality. She always shrank back lest others noticed it, and she always would. She particularly shunned strangers. The sight of a strange woman clothed about with utter respectability and strictest virtue intimidated her beyond her power of self-control, for she always wondered if she had been told about her, and realized that, if she had, her old disgrace had assumed in this new mind a hideous freshness.

After the door had slammed behind Rebecca the two women drove home, and the guest was presently feasted on company-fare for supper, and all these strange tragedies and histories to which she had listened had less of a savor in her memory, than the fine green tea and the sweet cake on her tongue. The hostess, too, did not have them in mind any longer; she pressed the plum-cake and hot biscuits and honey on her cousin, in lieu of gossip, for entertainment. The stories were old to her, except as she found a new listener to them, and they had never had any vital interest for her. They had simply made her imagination twang pleasantly, and now they could hardly stir the old vibrations.

It seemed sometimes as if their hard story must finally grow old, and lose its bitter savor to Charlotte and Barney themselves. Sometimes Charlotte's mother looked at her inquiringly and said to herself, "I don't believe she ever thinks about it now." She told Cephas so, and the old man nodded. "She's a fool if she does," he returned, gruffly.

Cephas had never told anybody how he had gone once to Barney Thayer's door, and there stood long and delivered himself of a strange harangue, wherein the penitence and desire for peace had been thinly veiled by a half-wild and eccentric philosophy; but the gist of which had been the humble craving for pardon of an old man, and his beseeching that his daughter's lover, separated from her by his own fault, should forget it and come back to her.

"I haven't got anything to say about it," Barney had replied, and the old man had seemed to experience a sudden shock and rebound, as from the unexpected face of a rock in his path.

However, he still hoped that Barney would relent and come. The next Sunday evening he had himself laid the parlor fire all ready for lighting, and hinted that Charlotte should change her dress. When nobody came he looked more crestfallen than his daughter; she suspected, although he never knew it.

Charlotte had never learned any trade, but she had a reputation for great natural skill with her needle. Gradually, as she grew older, she settled into the patient single-woman position as assister at feasts, instead of participator. When a village girl of a younger generation than herself was to be married, she was in great demand for the preparation of the bridal outfit and the finest needle-work. She would go day after day to the house of the bride-elect, and sew from early morning until late night upon the elaborate quilts, the dainty linen, and the fine new wedding-gowns.

She bore herself always with a steady cheerfulness; nobody dreamed that this preparing others for the happiness which she herself had lost was any trial to her. Nobody dreamed that every stitch which she set in wedding-garments took painfully in a piece of her own heart, and that not from envy. Her faithful needle, as she sewed, seemed to keep her old wounds open like a harrow, but she never shrank. She saw the sweet, foolish smiles and blushes of happy girls whose very wits were half astray under the dazzle of love; she felt them half tremble under her hands as she fitted the bridal-gowns to their white shoulders, as if under the touch of their lovers.

They walked before her and met her like doppelgaengers, wearing the self-same old joy of her own face, but she looked at them unswervingly. It is harder to look at the likeness of one's joy than at one's old sorrow, for the one was dearer. If Charlotte's task whereby she earned her few shillings had been the consoling and strengthening of poor forsaken, jilted girls, instead of the arraying of brides, it would have been a happier and an easier one.

But she sat sewing fine, even stitches by the light of the evening candle, hearing the soft murmur of voices from the best rooms, where the fond couples sat, smiling like a soldier over her work. She pinned on bridal veils and flowers, and nobody knew that her own face instead of the bride's seemed to smile mockingly at her through the veil.

She was much happier, although she would have sternly denied it to herself, when she was watching with the sick and putting her wonderful needle-work into shrouds, for it was in request for that also.

Except for an increase in staidness and dignity, and a certain decorous change in her garments, Charlotte Barnard did not seem to grow old at all. Her girlish bloom never faded under her sober bonnet, although ten years had gone by since her own marriage had been broken off.

Barney used to watch furtively Charlotte going past. He knew quite well when she was helping such and such a girl get ready to be married. He saw her going home, a swift shadowy figure, after dark, with her few poor shillings in her pocket. That she should go out to work filled him with a fierce resentment. With a childish and masculine disregard for all except bare actualities, he could not see why she need to, why she could not let him help her. He knew that Cephas Barnard's income was very meagre, that Charlotte needed her little earnings for the barest necessaries; but why could she not let him give them to her?

Barney was laying up money. He had made his will, whereby he left everything to Charlotte, and to her children after her if she married. He worked very hard. In summer he tilled his great farm, in winter he cut wood.

The winter of the tenth year after his quarrel with Charlotte was a very severe one—full of snow-storms and fierce winds, and bitterly cold. All winter long the swamps were frozen up, and men could get into them to cut wood. Barney went day after day and cut the wood in a great swamp a mile behind his house. He stood from morning until night hewing down the trees, which had gotten their lusty growth from the graves of their own kind. Their roots were sunken deep among and twined about the very bones of their fathers which helped make up the rich frozen soil of the great swamp. The crusty snow was three feet deep; the tall blackberry vines were hooped with snow, set fast at either end like snares: it was hard work making one's way through them. The snow was over the heads of those dried weeds which did not blow away in the autumn, but stayed on their stalks with that persistency of life that outlives death; but all the sturdy bushes, which were almost trees, the swamp-pinks and the wild-roses, waxed gigantic, lost their own outlines, and stretched out farther under their loads of snow.

Barney hewed wood in the midst of this white tangle of trees and bushes and vines, which were like a wild, dumb multitude of death-things pressing ever against him, trying to crowd him away. When he hit them as he passed, they swung back in his face with a semblance of life. If a squirrel chattered and leaped between some white boughs, he started as if some dead thing had come to life, for it seemed like the voice and motion of death rather than of life.

Half a mile away at the right other wood-cutters were at work. When the wind was the right way he could now and then hear the strokes of their axes and a shout. Often as he worked alone, swinging his axe steadily with his breath in a white cloud before his face, he amused himself miserably—as one might with a bitter sweetmeat—with his old dreams.

He had no dreams in the present; they all belonged to the past, and he dreamed them over as one sings over old songs. Sometimes it seemed quite possible that they still belonged to his life, and might still come true.

Then he would hear a hoarse shout through the still air from the other side of the swamp, and he would know suddenly that Charlotte would never wait in his home yonder, while he worked, and welcome him home at night.

The other wood-cutters had families. They had to pass his lot on their way out to the open road. Barney would either retreat farther among the snowy thickets, or else work with such fury that he could seem not to see them as they filed past.

Often he did not go home at noon, and ate nothing from morn until night. He cut wood many days that winter when the other men thought the weather too severe and sat huddled over their fires in their homes, shoving their chairs this and that way at their wives' commands, or else formed chewing and gossiping rings within the glowing radius of the red-hot store stove.

"See Barney Thayer goin' cross lots with his axe as I come by," one said to another, rolling the tobacco well back into his grizzled cheek.

"Works as if he was possessed," was the reply, in a half-inarticulate, gruff murmur.

"Well, he can if he wants to," said still another. "I ain't goin' to work out-doors in any such weather as this for nobody, not if I know it, an' I've got a wife an' eight children, an' he ain't got nobody." And the man cast defiant eyes at the great store-windows, dim with thick blue sheaves of frost.

On a day like that Barney seemed to be hewing asunder not only the sturdy fibres of oak and hemlock, but the terrible sinews of frost and winter, and many a tree seemed to rear itself over him threatening stiffly like an old man of death. Only by fierce contest, as it were, could he keep himself alive, but he had a certain delight in working in the swamp during those awful arctic days. The sense that he could still fight and conquer something, were it only the simple destructive force of nature, aroused in him new self-respect.

Through snow-storms Barney plunged forth to the swamp, and worked all day in the thick white slant of the storm, with the snow heaping itself upon his bowed shoulders.

People prophesied that he would kill himself; but he kept on day after day, and had not even a cold until February. Then there came a south rain and a thaw, and Barney went to the swamp and worked two days knee-deep in melting snow. Then there was a morning when he awoke as if on a bed of sharp knives, and lay alone all day and all that night, and all the next day and that night, not being able to stir without making the knives cut into his vitals.

Barney lay there all that time, and his soul became fairly bound into passiveness with awful fetters of fiery bone and muscle; sometimes he groaned, but nobody heard him. The last night he felt as if his whole physical nature was knitting about him and stifling him with awful coils of pain. The tears rolled over his cheeks. He prayed with hoarse gasps, and he could not tell if anybody heard him. A dim light from a window in the Barnard house on the hill lay into the kitchen opposite his bedroom door. He thought of Charlotte, as if he had been a child and she his mother. The maternal and protecting element in her love was all that appealed to him then, and all that he missed or wanted. "Charlotte, Charlotte," he mumbled to himself with his parched, quivering lips.

At noon the next day Cephas Barnard came home from the store; he had been down to buy some molasses. When he entered his kitchen he set the jug down on the table with a hard clap, then stood still in his wet boots.

Sarah and Charlotte were getting dinner, both standing over the stove. Sarah glanced at Cephas furtively, then at Charlotte; Cephas never stirred. A pool of water collected around his boots, his brows bent moodily under his cap.

"Why don't you set down, Cephas, an' take off your boots?" Sarah ventured at length, timidly.

"Folks are fools," grunted Cephas.

"I dunno what you mean, Cephas."

Cephas got the boot-jack out of the corner, sat down, and began jerking off the wet boots with sympathetic screws of his face.

Sarah stood with a wooden spoon uplifted, eying him anxiously. Charlotte went into the pantry.

"There 'ain't anythin' happened, has there, Cephas?" said Sarah, presently.

Cephas pulled off the second boot, and sat holding his blue yarn stocking-feet well up from the wet floor. "There ain't no need of havin' the rheumatiz, accordin' to my way of thinkin'," said he.

"Who's got the rheumatiz, Cephas?"

"If folks lived right they wouldn't have it."

"You 'ain't got it, have you, Cephas?"

"I 'ain't never had a tech of it in my life except once, an' then 'twas due to my not drinkin' enough."

"Not drinkin' enough?"

"Yes, I didn't drink enough water. Folks with rheumatiz had ought to drink all the water they can swaller. They had ought to drink more'n they eat."

"I dunno what you mean, Cephas."

"It stands to reason. I've worked it all out in my mind. Rheumatiz comes on in wet weather, because there's too much water an' damp 'round. Now, if there's too much water outside, you can kind of even it up by takin' more water inside. The reason for any sickness is—the balance ain't right. The weight gets shifted, an' folks begin to topple, then they're sick. If it goes clean over, they die. The balance has got to be kept even if you want to be well. When the swamps are fillin' up with water, an' there's too much moisture in the outside air, an' too much pressure of it on your bones an' joints, if you swallow enough water inside it keeps things even. If Barney Thayer had drunk a gallon of water a day, he might have worked in the wet swamp till doomsday an' he wouldn't have got the rheumatiz."

"Has Barney Thayer got the rheumatiz, Cephas?"

Charlotte's pale face appeared in the pantry door.

"Yes, he has got it bad. 'Ain't stirred out of his bed since night before last; been all alone; nobody knew it till William Berry went in this forenoon. Guess he'd died there if he'd been left much longer."

"Who's with him now?" asked Charlotte, in a quick, strained voice.

"The Ray boy is sittin' with him, whilst William is gone to the North Village to see if he can get somebody to come. There's a widow woman over there that goes out nussin', Silas said, an' they hope they can get her. The doctor says he's got to have somebody."

"Rebecca can't do anything, of course," said Sarah, meditatively; "he 'ain't got any of his own folks to come, poor feller."

Charlotte crossed the kitchen floor with a resolute air.

"What are you goin' to do, Charlotte?" her mother asked in a trembling voice.

Charlotte turned around and faced her father and mother. "I shouldn't think you'd ask me," said she.

"You ain't—goin'—over—?"

"Of course I am going over there. Do you suppose I am going to let him lie there and suffer all alone, with nobody to take care of him?"

"There's—the woman—comin'."

"She can't come. I know who the woman is. They tried to get her when Squire Payne's sister died last week. Aunt Sylvy told me about it. She was engaged 'way ahead."

"Oh, Charlotte! I'm afraid you hadn't ought to go," her mother said, half crying.

"I've got to go, mother," Charlotte said, quietly. She opened the door.

"You come back here!" Cephas called after her in a great voice.

Charlotte turned around. "I am going, father," said she.

"You ain't goin' a step."

"Yes, I am."

"Oh, Charlotte! I'll go over," sobbed her mother.

"You haven't gone a step out-doors for a month with your own lame knee. I am the one to go, and I am going."

"You ain't goin' a step."

"Oh, Charlotte! I'm afraid you hadn't better," wailed Sarah.

Charlotte stood before them both. "Look here, father and mother," said she. "I've never gone against your wishes in my life, but now I'm going to. It's my duty to. I was going to marry him once."

"You didn't marry him," said Cephas.

"I was willing to marry him, and that amounts to the same thing for any woman," said Charlotte. "It is just as much my duty to go to him when he's sick; I am going. There's no use talking, I am going."

"You needn't come home again, then," said her father.

"Oh, Cephas!" Sarah cried out. "Charlotte, don't go against your father's wishes! Charlotte!"

But Charlotte shut the door and hurried up-stairs to her room. Her mother followed her, trembling. Cephas sat still, dangling his stocking-feet clear of the floor. He had an ugly look on his face. Presently he heard the two women coming down-stairs, and his wife's sobbing, pleading voice; then he heard the parlor door shut; Charlotte had gone through the house, and out the front door.

Sarah came in, sniffing piteously. "Oh, Cephas! don't you be hard on the poor child; she felt as if she had got to go," she said, chokingly.

Cephas got up, went padding softly and cautiously in his stocking-feet across the floor to the sink, and took a long drink with loud gulps out of the gourd in the water-pail.

"I don't want to have no more talk about it; I've said my say," said he, with a hard breath, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Charlotte, with a little bundle under her arm, hastened down the hill. When she reached Barney's house she went around and knocked at the side door. As she went into the yard she could see dimly a white-capped woman's head in a south window of the Thayer house farther down the road, and she knew that Rebecca's nurse was watching her. Rebecca's second baby was a week old, so she could do nothing for her brother.

Charlotte knocked softly and waited. She heard a loud clamping step across the floor inside, and a whistle. A boy opened the door and stood staring at her, half abashed, half impudently important, his mouth still puckered with the whistle.

"Is there anybody here but you, Ezra?" asked Charlotte.

The boy shook his head.

"I have come to take care of Mr. Thayer now," said Charlotte.

She entered, and Ezra Ray stood aside, rolling his eyes after her as she went through the kitchen. He whistled again half involuntarily, a sudden jocular pipe on the brink of motion, like a bird. Charlotte turned and shook her head at him, and he stopped short. He sat down on a chair near the door, and dangled his feet irresolutely.

Charlotte went into the bedroom where Barney lay, a rigidly twisted, groaning heap under a mass of bed-clothing, which Ezra Ray had kept over him with energy. She bent over him. "I've come to take care of you, Barney," said she. His eyes, half dazed in his burning face, looked up at her with scarcely any surprise.



Charlotte laid back some of the bedclothes whose weight was a torture, and straightened the others. She worked about the house noiselessly and swiftly. She was skilful in the care of the sick; she had had considerable experience. Soon everything was clean and in order; there was a pleasant smell of steeping herbs through the house. Charlotte had set an old remedy of her mother's steeping over the fire—a harmless old-wives' decoction, with which to supplement the doctor's remedies, and give new courage to the patient's mind.

Barney came to think that this remedy which Charlotte prepared was of more efficacy than any which the doctor mixed in his gallipots. That is, when he could think at all, and his mind and soul was able to reassert itself over his body. He had a hard illness, and after he was out of bed he could only sit bent miserably over in a quilt-covered rocking-chair beside the fire. He could not straighten himself up without agonizing pain. People thought that he never would, and he thought so himself. His grandfather, his mother's father, had been in a similar condition for years before his death. People called that to mind, and so did Barney. "He's goin' to be the way his grandfather Emmons was," the men said in the store. Barney could dimly remember that old figure bent over almost on all-fours like a dog; its wretched, grizzled face turned towards the earth with a brooding sternness of contemplation. He wondered miserably where his grandfather's old cane was, when he should be strong enough in his pain-locked muscles to leave his rocking-chair and crawl about in the spring sunshine. It used to be in the garret of the old house. He thought that he would ask Rebecca or William to look for it some day. He hesitated to speak about it. He half dreaded to think that the time was coming when he would be strong enough to move about, for then he was afraid Charlotte would leave him and go home. He had been afraid that she would when he left his bed. He had a childishly guilty feeling that he had perhaps stayed there a little longer than was necessary on that account. One Sunday the doctor had said quite decisively to Charlotte, "It won't hurt him any to be got up a little while to-morrow. It will be better for him. You can get William to come in and help." Charlotte had come back from the door and reported to Barney, and he had turned his face away with a quivering sigh.

"Why, what is the matter? Don't you want to be got up?" asked Charlotte.

"Yes," said Barney, miserably.

"What is the matter?" Charlotte said, bending over him. "Don't you feel well enough?"

Barney gave her a pitiful, shamed look like a child. "You'll go, then," he half sobbed.

Charlotte turned away quickly. "I shall not go as long as you need me, Barney," she said, with a patient dignity.

Barney did not dream against what odds Charlotte had stayed with him. Her mother had come repeatedly, and expostulated with her out in the entry when she went away.

"It ain't fit for you to stay here, as if you was married to him, when you ain't, and ain't ever goin' to be, as near as I can make out," she said. "William can get that woman over to the North Village now, or I can come, or your aunt Hannah would come for a while, till Rebecca gets well enough to see to him a little. She was sayin' yesterday that it wa'n't fit for you to stay here."

"I'm here, and I'm going to stay here till he's better than he is now," said Charlotte.

"Folks will talk."

"I can't help it if they do. I'm doing what I think is right."

"It ain't fit for an unmarried woman like you to be takin' care of him," said her mother, and a sudden blush flamed over her old face.

Charlotte did not blush at all. "William comes in every day," she said, simply.

"I think he could get along a while now with what William does an' what we could cook an' bring in," pleaded her mother. "I'd come over every day an' set a while; I'd jest as lieves as not. If you'd only come home, Charlotte. Your father didn't mean anythin' when he said you shouldn't. He asked me jest this mornin' when you was comin'."

"I ain't coming till he's well enough so he don't need me," said Charlotte. "There's no use talking, mother. I must go back now; he'll wonder what we're talking about;" and she shut the door gently upon her mother, still talking.

Her aunt Hannah came, and her aunt Sylvia, quaking with gentle fears. She even had to listen to remonstrances from William Berry, honestly grateful as he was for her care of his brother-in-law.

"I ain't quite sure that it's right for you to stay here, Charlotte," he said, looking away from her uncomfortably. "Rebecca says—'Hadn't you better let me go for that woman again?'"

"I think I had better stay for the present," Charlotte replied.

"Of course—I know you do better for him—than anybody else could, but—"

"How is Rebecca?" asked Charlotte.

"She is getting along pretty well, but it's slow. She's kind of worried about you, you know. She's had considerable herself to bear. It's hard to have folks—" William stopped short, his face burning.

"I am not afraid, if I know I am doing what is right," said Charlotte. "You tell Rebecca I am coming in to see her as soon as I can get a chance."

One contingency had never occurred to Barney in his helpless clinging to Charlotte. He had never once dreamed that people might talk disparagingly about her in consequence. He had, partly from his isolated life, partly from natural bent, a curious innocence and ignorance in his conception of human estimates of conduct. He had not the same vantage-points with many other people, and indeed in many cases seemed to hold the identical ones which he had chosen when a child and first observed anything.

If now and then he overheard a word of expostulation, he never interpreted it rightly. He thought that people considered it wrong for Charlotte to do so much for him, and weary herself, when he had treated her so badly. And he agreed with them.

He thought that he should never stand upright again. He went always before his own mental vision bent over like his grandfather, his face inclined ever downward towards his miserable future.

Still, as he sat after William had gotten him up in the morning, bowed over pitifully in his chair, there was at times a strange look in his eyes as he watched Charlotte moving about, which seemed somehow to give the lie to his bent back. Often Charlotte would start as she met this look, and think involuntarily that he was quite straight; then she would come to her old vision with a shock, and see him sitting there as he was.

At last there came a day when the minister and one of the deacons of the church called and asked to see Charlotte privately. Barney looked at them, startled and quite white. They sat with him quite a long while, when, after many coercive glances between the deacon and the minister, the latter had finally arisen and made the request, in a trembling, embarrassed voice.

Charlotte led them at once into the unfinished front parlor, with its boarded-up windows. Barney heard her open the front door to give them light and air. He sat still and waited, breathing hard. A terrible dread and curiosity came over him. It seemed as if his soul overreached his body into that other room. Without overhearing a word, suddenly a knowledge quite foreign to his own imagination seemed to come to him.

Presently he heard the front door shut, then Charlotte came in alone. She was very pale, but she had a sweet, exalted look as her eyes met Barney's.

"Have they gone?" he asked, hoarsely.

Charlotte nodded.

"What—did they want?"

"Never mind," said Charlotte.

"I want to know."

"It is nothing for you to worry about."

"I know," said Barney.

"You didn't hear anything?" Charlotte cried out in a startled voice.

"No, I didn't hear, but I know. The church—don't—think you ought to—stay here. They are—going to—take it—up. I never—thought of that, Charlotte. I never thought of that."

"Don't you worry anything about it." Charlotte had never touched him, except to minister to his illness, since she had been there. Now she went close, and smoothed his hair with her tender hands. "Don't you worry," she said again.

Barney looked up in her face. "Charlotte."

"What is it?"

"I—want you—to go—home."

Charlotte started. "I shall not go home as long as you need me," she said. "You need not think I mind what they say."

"I—want you to go home."

"Barney!"

"I mean what—I say. I—want you to go—now."

"Not now?"

"Yes, now."

Charlotte drew back; her lips wore a white line. She went out into the front south room, where she had slept. She did not come back. Barney listened until he heard the front door shut after her. Then he waited fifteen minutes, with his eyes upon the clock. Then he got up out of his chair. He moved his body as if it were some piece of machinery outside himself, as if his will were full of dominant muscles. He got his hat off the peg, where it had hung for weeks; he went out of the house and out of the yard.

His sister Rebecca was moving feebly up the road with her little baby in her arms. She was taking her first walk out in the spring sunshine. The nurse had gone away the week before. Her face was clear and pale. All her sweet color was gone, but her eyes were radiant, and she held up her head in the old way. This new love was lifting her above her old memories.

She stared wonderingly over the baby's little downy head at her brother. "It can't be Barney," she said out loud to herself. She stood still in the road, staring after him with parted lips. The baby wailed softly, and she hushed it mechanically, her great, happy, startled eyes fixed upon her brother.

Barnabas went on up the hill to Charlotte Barnard's. The spring was advancing. All the trees were full of that green nebula of life which comes before the blossom. Little wings, bearing birds and songs, cut the air. A bluebird shone on a glistening fence-rail, like a jewel on a turned hand. Over across the fields red oxen were moving down plough-ridges, the green grass was springing, the air was full of that strange fragrance which is more than fragrance, since it strikes the thoughts, which comes in the spring alone, being the very odor thrown off by the growing motion of life and the resurrection.

Barney Thayer went slowly up the hill with a curious gait and strange gestures, as if his own angel were wrestling with himself, casting him off with strong motions as of wings.

He fought, as it were, his way step by step. He reached the top of the hill, and went into the yard of the Barnard house. Sarah Barnard saw him coming, and shrieked out, "There's Barney, there's Barney Thayer comin'! He's walkin', he's walkin' straight as anybody!"

When Barney reached the door, they all stood there—Cephas and Sarah and Charlotte. Barney stood before them all with that noble bearing which comes from humility itself when it has fairly triumphed.

Charlotte came forward, and he put his arm around her. Then he looked over her head at her father. "I've come back," said he.

"Come in," said Cephas.

And Barney entered the house with his old sweetheart and his old self.

THE END