"Well," said she, "Luella an' Freeman Henry come over here this very day, an' Freeman Henry's possessed you should sell him the Flat-Iron Lot."

"Wants the Flat-Iron Lot, does he?" inquired Nicholas grimly. "What's he made up his mind to do with it?"

"He wants to build," answered Hattie, momentarily encouraged. "He says he'll be glad to ride over to work, every mornin' of his life, if he can only feel 't he's settled in Tiverton for good. An' there's that lot on high ground, right near the meetin'-house, as sightly a place as ever was, an' no good to you,—there ain't half a load o' hay cut there in a season,—an' he'd pay the full vally"—

"Stop!" called Nicholas; and though his tone was conversational, Hattie paused, open-mouthed, in full swing. He turned and faced her. "Hattie," said he, "did you know that the fust settlers of this town had anything to do with that lot o' land?"

"No, I didn't know it," answered Hattie blankly.

"I guess you didn't," concurred Nicholas. He had gone back to his old gentleness of voice. "An' 't wouldn't ha' meant nothin' to ye, if ye had known it. Now, you harken to me! It's my last word. That Flat-Iron Lot stays under this name so long as I'm above ground. When I'm gone, you can do as ye like. Now, I don't want to hurry ye, but I'm goin' down to vote."

Hattie rose, abashed and nearly terrified. "Well!" said she vacantly. "Well!" Nicholas had taken the broom, under pretext of brushing up the crumbs, and he seemed literally to be sweeping her away. It was a wind of destiny; and scudding softly and heavily before it, she disappeared in the gathering dusk.

"Mary!" she called from the gate, "Mary! Guess you better come along with me."

Mary did not hear. She was standing by Nicholas, holding the edge of his sleeve. The unaccustomed action was significant; it bespoke a passionate loyalty. Her blue eyes were on fire, and two hot tears stood in them, unstanched. "O gran'ther!" she cried, "don't you let 'em have it. I wish I was father. I'd see!"

Nicholas Oldfield stood quite still, obedient to that touch upon his arm.

"It's the name, Mary," said he. "Why, Freeman Henry's a Titcomb! He can't help that. But he needn't think he can buy Oldfield land, an' set up a house there, as if 't was all in the day's work. Why, Mary, I meant to leave that land to you! An' p'raps you won't marry. Nobody knows. Then, 't would stand in the name a mite longer."

Mary blushed a little, but her eyes never wavered.

"No, gran'ther," said she firmly, "I sha'n't ever marry anybody."

"Well, ye can't tell," responded Nicholas, with a sigh. "Ye can't tell. He might take your name if he wanted ye enough; but I should call it a poor tool that would do that."

He sighed again, as he reached for his hat, and Mary and he went out of the house together, hand in hand. At the gate they parted, and Nicholas took his way to the schoolhouse, where the town fathers were already assembled.

Since he passed over it that afternoon, the road had changed, responsive to twilight and the coming dark. Nicholas knew it in all its phases, from the dawn of spring, vocal with the peeping of frogs, to the revery of winter, the silence of snow, and a hopeful glow in the west. Just here, by the barberry bush at the corner, he had stood still under the spell of Northern Lights. That was the night when his wife lay first in Tiverton churchyard; and he remembered, as a part of the strangeness and wonder of the time, how the north had streamed, and the neighboring houses had been rosy red. But at this hour of the brooding, sultry fall, there was a bitter fragrance in the air, and the world seemed tuned to the somnolent sound of crickets, singing the fields to sleep. That one little note brooded over the earth, and all the living things upon it: hovering, and crooning, and lulling them to the rest decreed from of old. The homely beauty of it smote upon him, though it could not cheer. A hideous progress seemed to threaten, not alone the few details it touched, but all the sweet, familiar things of life. Old War-Wool Eaton, in assailing the town's historic peace, menaced also the crickets and the breath of asters in the air. He was the rampant spirit of an awful change. So, in the bitterness of revolt, Nicholas Oldfield marched on, and stepped silently into the little schoolhouse, to meet his fellows. They were standing about in groups, each laying down the law according to his kind. The doors were wide open, and Nicholas felt as if he had brought in with him the sounds of coming night. They kept him sane, so that he could hold his own, as he might not have done in a room full of winter brightness.

"Hullo!" cried Caleb Rivers, in his neutral voice. "Here's Mr. Oldfield. Well, Mr. Oldfield, there's a good deal on hand."

"Called any votes?" asked Nicholas.

"Well, no," said Caleb, scraping his chin. "I guess we're sort o' takin' the sense o' the meetin'."

"Good deal like a quiltin' so fur," remarked Brad Freeman indulgently. "All gab an' no git there!"

"They tell me," said Uncle Eli Pike, approaching Nicholas as if he had something to confide, "that out west, where they have them new-fangled clocks, they're all lighted up with 'lectricity."

"Do they so?" asked Caleb, but Nicholas returned, with an unwonted fierceness:—

"Does that go to the right spot with you? Do you want to see a clock-face starin' over Tiverton, like a full moon, chargin' ye to keep Old War-Wool Eaton in memory?"

"Well, no," replied Eli gently, "I dunno's I do, an' I dunno but I do."

"Might set a lantern back o' the dial, an' take turns lightin' on 't," suggested Brad Freeman.

"Might carve out a jack-o'-lantern like Old Eaton's face," supplemented Tom O'Neil irreverently.

"Well," concluded Rivers, "I guess, when all's said and done, we might as well take the clock, an' bell, too. When a man makes a fair offer, it's no more'n civil to close with it. Ye can't rightly heave it back ag'in."

"My argyment is," put in Ebenezer Tolman, who knew how to lay dollar by dollar, "if he's willin' to do one thing for the town, he's willin' to do another. S'pose he offered us a new brick meetin'-house—or a fancy gate to the cemet'ry! Or s'pose he had it in mind to fill in that low land, so 't we could bury there! Why, he could bring the town right up! Or, take it t' other way round; he could put every dollar he's got into Sudleigh."

Nicholas Oldfield groaned, but in the stress of voices no one heard him. He slipped about from one group to another, and always the sentiment was the same. A few smiled at Old War-Wool Eaton, who desired so urgently to be remembered, when no one was likely to forget him; but all agreed that it was, at the worst, a harmless and natural folly.

"Let him be remembered," said one, with a large impartiality. "'T won't do us no hurt, an' we shall have the clock an' bell."

Just as the meeting was called to order, Nicholas Oldfield stole away, and no one missed him. The proceedings began with some animated discussion, all tending one way. Cupidity had entered into the public soul, and everybody professed himself willing to take the clock, lest, by refusing, some golden future should be marred. Let Old Eaton have his way, if thereby they might beguile him into paving theirs. Let the town grow. Talk was very full and free; but when the moment came for taking a vote, an unexpected sound broke roundly on the air. It was the bell of the old church. One! it tolled. Each man looked at his neighbor. Had death entered the village, and they unaware? Two! three! it went solemnly on, the mellow cadence scarcely dying before another stroke renewed it. The sexton was Simeon Pease, a little red-headed man, a hunchback, abnormally strong. Suddenly he rose in amazement. His face looked ashen.

"Suthin's tollin' the bell!" he gasped. "The bell's a-tollin' an' I ain't there!"

A new element of mystery and terror sprang to life.

"The sax'on's here!" whispered one and another. But nobody stirred, for nobody would lose count. Twenty-three! the dead was young. Twenty-four! and so it marched and marched, to thirty and thirty-five. They looked about them, taking a swift inventory of familiar faces, and more than one man felt a tightening about his heart, at thought of the women-folk at home. The record climbed to middle-age, and tolled majestically beyond it, like a life ripening to victorious close. Sixty! seventy! eighty-one!

"It ain't Pa'son True!" whispered an awe-struck voice.

Then on it beat, to the completed century.

The women of Tiverton, in afterwards weighing the immobility of their public representatives under this mysterious clangor, dwelt upon the fact with scorn.

"Well, I should think you was smart!" cried sundry of them in turn. "Set there like a bump on a log, an' wonder what's the matter! Never heard of anything so numb in all my born days. If I was a man, I guess I'd see!"

It was Brad Freeman who broke the spell, with a sudden thought and cry,—

"By thunder! maybe's suthin's afire!"

He leaped to his feet, and with long, loping strides made his way up the hill to Tiverton church. The men, in one excited, surging rabble, followed him. The women were before them. They, too, had heard the tolling for the unknown dead, and had climbed a quicker way, leaving fire and cradle behind. At the very moment when they were pressing, men and women, to the open church door, the last lingering clang had ceased, the bell lay humming itself to rest, and Nicholas Oldfield strode out and faced them. By this time, factions had broken up, and each woman instinctively sought her husband's side, assuring herself of protection against the unresting things of the spirit. Young Nick's Hattie found her lawful ally, with the rest.

"My soul!" said she in a whisper, "it's father!"

Nicholas touched her arm in warning, and stood silent. He felt that the waters were troubled, as he had known them to be once or twice in his boyhood.

"He's got his mad up," remarked Young Nick to himself. "Stan' from under!"

Nicholas strode through the crowd, and it separated to let him pass. There was about him at that moment an amazing physical energy, apparent even in the dark. He seemed a different man, and one woman whispered to another, "Why, that can't be Mr. Oldfield! It's a head taller."

He walked across the green, and the crowd turned also, to follow him. There, just opposite the church, lay his own Flat-Iron Lot, and he stepped into it, over the low stone boundary, and turned about.

"Don't ye come no nearer," called he. "This is my land. Don't ye set foot on it."

The Flat-Iron Lot was a triangular piece of ground, rich in drooping elms, and otherwise varied only by a great boulder looming up within the wall nearest the church. Nicholas paused for a moment where he was; then with a thought of being the better heard, he turned, ran up the rough side of the boulder, and faced his fellows. As he stood there, illumined by the rising moon, he seemed colossal.

"He'll break his infernal old neck!" said Brad Freeman admiringly. But no one answered, for Nicholas Oldfield had begun to speak.

"Don't ye set foot on my land!" he repeated. "Ye ain't wuth it. Do you know what this land is? It belonged to a man that settled in a place that knows enough to celebrate its foundin', but don't know enough to prize what's fell to it. Do you know what I was doin' of, when I tolled that bell? I'll tell ye. I tolled a hunderd an' ten strokes. That's the age of the bell you're goin' to throw aside to flatter up a man that made money out o' the war. A hunderd an' twelve years ago that bell was cast in England; a hunderd an' ten years ago 't was sent over here."

"Now, how's father know that?" whispered Hattie disparagingly.

"I've cast my vote. Them hunderd an' ten strokes is all the voice I'll have in the matter, or any matter, so long as I live in this God-forsaken town. I'd ruther die than talk over a thing like that in open meetin'. It's an insult to them that went before ye, an' fit hunger and cold an' Injuns. I've got only one thing more to say," he continued, and some fancied there came a little break in his voice. "When ye take the old bell down, send her out to sea, an' sink her; or bury her deep enough in the woods, so 't nobody'll git at her till the Judgment Day."

With one descending step, he seemed to melt away into the darkness; and though every one stood quite still, expectant, there was no sound, save that of the crickets and the night. He had gone, and left them trembling. Well as they knew him, he had all the effect of some strange herald, freighted with wisdom from another sphere.

"Well, I swear!" said Brad Freeman, at length, and as if a word could shiver the spell, men and woman turned silently about and went down the hill. When they reached a lower plane, they stopped to talk a little, and once indoors, discussion had its way. Young Nick and Hattie had walked side by side, feeling that the eyes of the town were on them, reading their emblazoned names. But Mary marched behind them, solemnly and alone. She held her head very high, knowing what her kinsfolk thought: that gran'ther had disgraced them. A passionate protest rose within her.

That night, everybody watched the old house in the shade of the poplars, to see if Nicholas had "lighted up." But the windows lay dark, and little Mary, slipping over across the orchard, when her mother thought her safe in bed, tried the door in vain. She pushed at it wildly, and then ran round to the front, charging against the sentinel hollyhocks, and letting the knocker fall with a desperate and repeated clang. The noise she had herself evoked frightened her more than the stillness, and she fled home again, crying softly, and pursued by all the unresponsive presences of night.

For weeks Tiverton lay in a state of hushed expectancy; one miracle seemed to promise another. But Nicholas Oldfield's house was really closed; the windows shone blankly at men and women who passed, interrogating it. Young Nick and his Hattie had nothing to say, after Hattie's one unguarded admission that she didn't know what possessed father. The village felt that it had been arraigned before some high tribunal, only to be found lacking. It had an irritated conviction that, meaning no harm, it should not have been dealt with so harshly; and was even moved to declare that, if Nicholas Oldfield knew so much about what was past and gone, he needn't have waited till the trump o' doom to say so. But, somehow, the affair of clock and bell could not be at once revived, and a vague letter was dispatched to the prospective donor stating that, in regard to his generous offer, no decision could at the moment be reached; the town was too busy in preparing for its celebration, which would take place in something over two weeks; after that the question would be considered. The truth was that, at the bottom of each heart, still lurked the natural cupidity of the loyal citizen who will not see his town denied; but side by side with that desire for the march of progress, walked the spectre of Nicholas Oldfield's wrath. The trembling consciousness prevailed that he might at any moment descend again, wrapped in that inexplicable atmosphere of loftier meanings.

Still, Tiverton was glad to put the question by, for she had enough to do. The celebration knocked at the door, and no one was ready. Only Brad Freeman, always behindhand, save at some momentary exigency of rod or gun, was fulfilling the prophecy that the last shall be first. For he had, out of the spontaneity of genius, elected to do one deed for that great day, and his work was all but accomplished. In public conclave assembled to discuss the parade, he had offered to make an elephant, to lead the van. Tiverton roared, and then, finding him gravely silent, remained, with gaping mouth, to hear his story. It seemed, then, that Brad had always cherished one dear ambition. He would fain fashion an elephant; and having never heard of Frankenstein, he lacked anticipation of the dramatic finale likely to attend a meddling with the creative powers. He did not confess, save once to his own wife, how many nights he had lain awake, in their little dark bedroom, planning the anatomy of the eastern lord; he simply said that he "wanted to make the critter," and he thought he could do it. Immediately the town gave him to understand that he had full power to draw upon the public treasury, to the extent of one elephant; and the youth, who always flocked adoringly about him, intimated that they were with him, heart and soul. Thereupon, in Eli Pike's barn, selected as of goodly size, creation reveled, the while a couple of men, chosen for their true eye and practiced hand, went into the woods, and chopped down two beautiful slender trees for tusks. For many a day now, the atmosphere of sacred art had hung about that barn. Brad was a maker, and everybody felt it. Fired by no tradition of the horse that went to the undoing of Troy, and with no plan before him, he set his framework together, nailing with unerring hand. Did he need a design, he who had brooded over his bliss these many months when Tiverton thought he was "jest lazin' round?" Nay, it was to be "all wrought out of the carver's brain," and the brain was ready.

Often have I wished some worthy chronicler had been at hand when Tiverton sat by at the making of the elephant; and then again I have realized that, though the atmosphere was highly charged, it may have been void of homely talk. For this was a serious moment, and even when Brad gave sandpaper and glass into the hands of Lothrop Wilson, the cooper, bidding him smooth and polish the tusks, there was no jealousy: only a solemn sense that Mr. Wilson had been greatly favored. Brad's wife sewed together a dark slate-colored cambric, for the elephant's hide, and wet and wrinkled it, as her husband bade her, for the shambling shoulders and flanks. It was she who made the ears, from a pattern cunningly conceived; and she stuffed the legs with fine shavings brought from the planing-mill at Sudleigh. Then there came an intoxicating day when the trunk took shape, the glass-bottle eyes were inserted, and Brad sprung upon a breathless world his one surprise. Between the creature's fore-legs, he disclosed an opening, saying meantime to the smallest Crane boy,—

"You crawl up there!"

The Crane boy was not valiant, but he reasoned that it was better to seek an unguessed fate within the elephant than to refuse immortal glory. Trembling, he crept into the hole, and was eclipsed.

"Now put your hand up an' grip that rope that's hangin' there," commanded Brad. Perhaps he, too, trembled a little. The heart beats fast when we approach a great fruition.

"Pull it! Easy, now! easy!"

The boy pulled, and the elephant moved his trunk. He stretched it out, he drew it in. Never was such a miracle before. And Tiverton, drunk with glory, clapped and shouted until the women-folk clutched their sunbonnets and ran to see. No situation since the war had ever excited such ferment. Brad was the hero of his town. But now arose a natural rivalry, the reaction from great, impersonal joy in noble work. What lad, on that final day, should ride within the elephant, and move his trunk? The Crane boy contended passionately that he held the right of possession. Had he not been selected first? Others wept at home and argued the case abroad, until it became a common thing to see two young scions of Tiverton grappling in dusty roadways, or stoning each other from afar. The public accommodated itself to such spectacles, and grown-up relatives, when they came upon little sons rolling over and over, or sitting triumphantly, the one upon another's chest, would only remark, as they gripped two shirt collars, and dragged the combatants apart:—

"Now, what do you want to act so for? Brad'll pick out the one he thinks best. He's got the say."

In vain did mothers argue, at twilight time, when the little dusty legs in overalls were still, and stubbed toes did their last wriggling for the day, that the boy who moved the trunk could not possibly see the rest of the procession. The candidates, to a boy, rejected that specious plea.

"What do I want to see anything for, if I can jest set inside that elephant?" sobbed the Crane boy angrily. And under every roof the wail was repeated in many keys.

Meantime, the log cabin had been going steadily up, and a week before the great day, it was completed. This was a typical scene-setting,—the cabin of a first settler,—and through one wild leap of fancy it became suddenly and dramatically dignified.

"For the land's sake!" said aunt Lucindy, when she went by and saw it standing, in modest worth, "ain't they goin' to do anythin' with it? Jest let it set there? Why under the sun don't they have a party of Injuns tackle it?"

The woman who heard repeated the remark as a sample of aunt Lucindy's desire to have everything "all of a whew;" but when it came to the ears of a certain young man who had sat brooding, in silent emulation, over the birth of the elephant, he rose, with fire in his eye, and went to seek his mates. Indians there should be, and he, by right of first desire, should become their leader. Thereupon, turkey feathers came into great demand, and wattled fowl, once glorious, went drooping dejectedly about, while maidens sat in doorways sewing wampum and leggings for their favored swains. The first rehearsal of this aboriginal drama was not an entire success, because the leader, being unimaginative though faithful, decreed that faces should be blackened with burnt cork; and the result was a tribe of the African race, greatly astonished at their own appearance in the family mirror. Then the doctor suggested walnut juice, and all went conformably again. But each man wanted to be an Indian, and no one professed himself willing to suffer the attack.

"I'll stay in the cabin, if I can shoot, an' drop a redskin every time," said Dana Marden stubbornly; but no redskin would consent to be dropped, and naturally no settler could yield. It would ill befit that glorious day to see the log cabin taken; but, on the other hand, what loyal citizen could allow himself to be defeated, even as a skulking redman, at the very hour of Tiverton's triumph? For a time a peaceful solution was promised by the doctor, who proposed that a party of settlers on horseback should come to the rescue, just when a settler's wife, within the cabin, was in danger of immolation. That seemed logical and right, and for days thereafter young men on astonished farm horses went sweeping down Tiverton Street, alternately pursuing and pursued, while Isabel North, as Priscilla, the Puritan maiden, trembled realistically at the cabin door. Just why she was to be Priscilla, a daughter of Massachusetts, Isabel never knew; the name had struck the popular fancy, and she made her costume accordingly. But one day, when young Tiverton was galloping about the town, to the sound of ecstatic yells, a farmer drew up his horse to inquire:—

"Now see here! there's one thing that's got to be settled. When the day comes, who's goin' to beat?"

An Indian, his face scarlet with much sound, and his later state not yet apparent, in that his wampum, blanket, and horsehair wig lay at home, on the best-room bed, made answer hoarsely, "We be!"

"Not by a long chalk!" returned the other, and the settlers growled in unison. They had all a patriot's pride in upholding white blood against red.

"Well, by gum! then you can look out for your own Injuns!" returned their chief. "My last gun's fired."

Settlers and Indians turned sulkily about; they rode home in two separate factions, and the streets were stilled. Isabel North went faithfully on, making her Priscilla dress, but it seemed, in those days, as if she might remain in her log cabin, unattacked and undefended. Tiverton was to be deprived of its one dramatic spectacle. Young men met one another in the streets, remarked gloomily, "How are ye?" and passed by. There were no more curdling yells at which even the oxen lifted their dull ears; and one youth went so far as to pack his Indian suit sadly away in the garret, as a jilted girl might lay aside her wedding gown. It was a sullen and all but universal feud.

Now in all this time two prominent citizens had let public opinion riot as it would,—the minister and the doctor. The minister, a grave-faced, brown-bearded young man, had seen fit to get run down, and have an attack of slow fever, from which he was just recovering; and the doctor had been spending most of his time in Saltash, with an epidemic of mumps. But the mumps subsided, and the minister gained strength; so, being public-spirited men, these two at once concerned themselves in village affairs. The first thing the minister did was to call on Nicholas Oldfield, and Young Nick's Hattie saw him there, knocking at the front door.

"Mary! Mary!" cried she, "if there ain't the young pa'son over to your grandpa's. I dunno when anybody's called there, he's away so much. Like as not he's heard how father carried on that night, an' now he's got out, he's come right over, first thing, to tell him what folks think."

Mary looked up from the serpentine braid she was crocheting.

"Well, I guess he'd better not," she threatened. And her mother, absorbed by curiosity, contented herself with the reproof implied in a shaken head and pursed-up lips.

A sad and curious change had befallen Mary. She looked older. One week had dimmed her brightness, and little puckers between her eyes were telling a story of anxious care. For gran'ther had been home without her seeing him. Mary felt as if he had repudiated the town. She knew well that he had not abandoned her with it, but she could guess what the loss of larger issues meant to him. Young Nick, if he had been in the habit of expressing himself, would have said that father's mad was still up. Mary knew he was grieved, and she grieved also. She had not expected him until the end of the week. Then watching wistfully, she saw the darkness come, and knew next day would bring him; but the next day it was the same. One placid afternoon, a quick thought assailed her, and stained her cheek with crimson. She laid down the sheet which was her "stent" of over-edge, and ran with flying feet to the little house. Hanging by her hands upon the sill of the window nearest the clock, she laid her ear to the glass. The clock was ticking serenely, as of old. Gran'ther had been home to wind it. So he had come in the night, and slipped away again in silence!

* * * * *

"There! he's gi'n it up!" cried Hattie, still watching the minister. "He's turnin' down the path. My land! he's headed this way. He's comin' here. You beat up that cushion, an' throw open the best-room door. My soul! if your grandpa's goin' to set the whole town by the ears, I wisht he'd come home an' fight his own battles!"

Hattie did not look at her young daughter; but if she had looked, she might have been amazed. Mary stood firm as iron; she was more than ever a chip o' the old block.

When the young minister had somewhat weakly climbed the two front steps, he elected not to sit in the best room, for he was a little chilly, and would like the sun. Presently he was installed in the new cane-backed rocker, and Mrs. Oldfield had offered him some currant wine.

"Though I dunno's you would," said she, anxiously flaunting a principle righteous as his own. "I s'pose you're teetotal."

The minister would not have wine, and he could not stay.

"I've really come on business," said he. "Do you know anything about Mr. Oldfield?"

So strong was the family conviction that Nicholas had involved them in disgrace, that Mary glanced up fiercely, and her mother gave an apologetic cough.

"Well," said Young Nick's Hattie, "I dunno's I know anything particular about father."

"Where is he, I mean," asked the minister. "I want to see him. I've got to."

"Gran'ther's gone away," announced Mary, looking up at him with hot and loyal eyes. "We don't know where." Her fingers trembled, and she lost her stitch. She was furious with herself for not being calmer. It seemed as if gran'ther had a right to demand it of her. The minister bent his brows impatiently.

"Why, I depended on seeing Mr. Oldfield," said he, with the fractiousness of a man recently ill. "This sickness of mine has put me back tremendously. I've got to make the address, and I don't know what to say. I meant to read town records and hunt up old stories; and then when I was sick I thought, 'Never mind! Mr. Oldfield will have it all at his tongue's end.' And now he isn't here, and I'm all at sea without him."

This was perhaps the first time that Young Nick's Hattie had ever looked upon her father's pursuits with anything but a pitying eye. A frown of perplexity grew between her brows. Her brain ached in expanding. Mary leaned forward, her face irradiated with pure delight.

"Why, yes," said she, at once accepting the minister for a friend, "gran'ther could tell you, if he was here. He knows everything."

"You see," continued the minister, now addressing her, "there are facts enough that are common talk about the town, but we only half know them. The first settlers came from Devon. Well, where did they enter the town? From which point? Sudleigh side, or along by the river? I incline to the river. The doctor says it would be a fine symbolic thing to take the procession up to the church by the very way the first settlers came in. But where was it? I don't know, and nobody does, unless it's Nicholas Oldfield."

Mary folded her hands, in proud composure.

"Yes, sir," said she, "gran'ther knows. He could tell you, if he was here."

"I should like to inquire what makes you so certain, Mary Oldfield," asked her mother, with the natural irritation of the unprepared. "I should like to know how father's got hold of things pa'son and doctor ain't neither of 'em heard of?"

"Why," said the minister, rising, "he's simply crammed with town legends. He can repeat them by the yard. He's a local historian. But then, I needn't tell you that; you know what an untiring student he has been." And he went away thoughtful and discouraged, omitting, as Hattie realized with awe, to offer prayer.

Mary stepped joyously about, getting supper and singing "Hearken, Ye Sprightly!" in an exultant voice; but her mother brooded. It was not until dusk, when the three sat before the clock-room fire, "blazed" rather for company than warmth, that Young Nick's Hattie opened her mouth and spoke.

"Mary," said she, "how'd you find out your grandpa was such great shakes?"

Mary was in some things much older than her mother. She answered demurely, "I don't know as I can say."

"Nick," continued Hattie, turning to her spouse, "did you ever hear your father was smarter'n the minister an' doctor put together, so 't they had to run round beseechin' him to tell 'em how to act?"

Nicholas knocked his pipe against the andiron, and rose, to lay it carefully on the shelf. "I can't say's I did," he returned. Then he set forth for Eli Pike's barn, where it was customary now to stand about the elephant and prophesy what Tiverton might become. As for Hattie, realizing how little light she was likely to borrow from those who were nearest and dearest her, she remarked that she should like to shake them both.

The next day began a new and exciting era. It was bruited abroad that the presence of Nicholas Oldfield was necessary for the success of the celebration; and now young men but lately engaged in unprofitable warfare rode madly over the county in search of him. They inquired for him at taverns; they sought him in farmhouses where he had been wont to lodge. He gained almost the terrible notoriety of an absconding cashier; and the current issue of the Sudleigh "Star" wore a flaming headline, "No Trace of Mr. Oldfield Yet!"

Mary at first waxed merry over the pursuit. She knew very well why gran'ther was staying away; and her pride grew insolent at seeing him sought in vain. But when his loss flared out at her in sacred print, she stared for a moment, and then, after that wide-eyed, piteous glance at the possibilities of things, walked with a firm tread to her little room. There she knelt down, and buried her face in the bed, being careful, meanwhile, not to rumple the valance. At last she knew the truth; he was dead, and village gossip seemed a small thing in comparison.

It would have been difficult, as time went on, to convince the rest of the township that Mr. Oldfield was not in a better world.

"They'd ha' found him, if he's above ground," said the fathers, full of faith in the detective instinct of their coursing sons. It seemed incredible that sons should ride so fast and far, and come to nothing. "Never was known to go out o' the county, an' they've rid over it from one eend to t' other. Must ha' made way with himself. He wa'n't quite right, that time he tolled the bell."

They found ominous parallels of peddlers who had been murdered in byways, or stuck in swamps, and even cited a Tivertonian, of low degree, who was once caught beneath the chin by a clothes-line, and remained there, under the impression that he was being hanged, until the family came out in the morning, and tilted him the other way.

"But then," they added, "he was a drinkin' man, an' Mr. Oldfield never was known to touch a drop, even when he had a tight cold."

Dark as the occasion waxed, what with feuds and presentiments of ill, there was some casual comfort in rolling this new tragedy as a sweet morsel under the tongue, and a mournful pleasure in referring to the night when poor Mr. Oldfield was last seen alive. So time went on to the very eve of the celebration, and it was as well that the celebration had never been. For kindly as Tiverton proved herself, in the main, and closely welded in union against rival towns, now it seemed as if the hand of every man were raised against his brother. Settlers and Indians were still implacable; neither would ride, save each might slay the other. The Crane boy tossed in bed, swollen to the eyes with an evil tooth; and his exulting mates so besieged Brad Freeman for preferment, that even that philosopher's patience gave way, and he said he'd be hanged if he'd take the elephant out at all, if there was going to be such a to-do about it. Even the minister sulked, though he wore a pretense of dignity; for he had concocted a short address with very little history in it, and that all hearsay, and the doctor had said lightly, looking it over, "Well, old man, not much of it, is there? But there's enough of it, such as it is."

It was in vain for the doctor to declare that this was a colloquialism which might mean much or little, as you chose to take it. The minister, justly hurt, remarked that, when a man was in a tight place, he needed the support of his friends, if he had any; and the doctor went whistling drearily away, conscious that he could have said much worse about the address, without doing it justice.

The only earthly circumstance which seemed to be fulfilling its duty toward Tiverton was the weather. That shone seraphically bright. The air was never so soft, the skies were never so clear and far, and they were looking down indulgently on all this earthly turmoil when, something before midnight, on the fateful eve, Nicholas Oldfield went up the path to his side-door, and stumbled over despairing Mary on the step.

"What under the heavens"—he began; but Mary precipitated herself upon him, and held him with both hands. The moral tension, which had held her hopeless and rigid, gave way. She was sobbing wildly.

"O gran'ther!" she moaned, over and over again. "O gran'ther!"

Nicholas managed somehow to get the door open and walk in, hampered as he was by the clinging arms of his tall girl. Then he sat down in the big chair, taking Mary there too, and stroked her cheek. Perhaps he could hardly have done it in the light, but at that moment it seemed very natural. For a long time neither of them spoke. Mary had no words, and it may be that Nicholas could not seek for them. At last she began, catching her breath tremulously:—

"They've hunted everywhere, gran'ther. They've rode all over the county; and after the celebration, they're going to—dr—drag the pond!"

"Well, I guess I can go out o' the county if I want to," responded Nicholas calmly. "I come across a sheet in them rec'ids that told about a pewter communion set over to Rocky Ridge, an' I've found part on 't in a tavern there. Who put 'em up to all this work? Your father?"

"No," sobbed Mary. "The minister."

"The minister? What's he want?"

"He's got to write an address, and he wants you to tell him what to say."

Then, in the darkness of the room, a slow smile stole over Nicholas Oldfield's face, but his voice remained quite grave.

"Does, does he?" he remarked. "Well, he ain't the fust pa'son that's needed a lift; but he's the fust one ever I knew to ask for it. I've got nothin' for 'em, Mary. I come home to wind up the clocks; but I ain't goin' to stand by a town that'll swaller a Memory-o'-Me timekeeper an' murder the old bell. You can say I was here, an' they needn't go to muddyin' up the ponds; but as to their doin's, they can carry 'em out as they may. I've no part nor lot in 'em."

Mary, in the weakness of her kind, was wiser than she knew. She drew her arms about his neck, and clung to him the closer. All this talk of plots and counter-plots seemed very trivial now that she had him back; and being only a child, wearied with care and watching, she went fast asleep on his shoulder. Nicholas felt tired too; but he thought he had only dozed a little when he opened his eyes on a gleam of morning, and saw the doctor come striding into the yard.

"Your door's open!" called the doctor. "You must be at home to callers. Morning, Mary! Either of you sick?"

Mary, abashed, drew herself away, and slipped into the sitting-room, a hand upon her tumbled hair; the doctor, wise in his honesty, slashed at the situation without delay.

"See here, Mr. Oldfield," said he, "whether you've slept or not, you've got to come right over to parson's with me, and straighten him out. He's all balled up. You are as bad as the rest of us. You think we don't know enough to refuse a clock like a comic valentine, and you think we don't prize that old bell. How are we going to prize things if nobody tells us anything about them? And here's the town going to pieces over a celebration it hasn't sense enough to plan, just because you're so obstinate. Oh, come along! Hear that! The boys are beginning to toot, and fire off their crackers, and Tiverton's going to the dogs, and Sudleigh'll be glad of it! Come, Mr. Oldfield, come along!"

Nicholas stood quite calmly looking through the window into the morning dew and mist. He wore his habitual air of gentle indifference, and the doctor saw in him those everlasting hills which persuasion may not climb. Suddenly there was a rustling from the other room, and Mary appeared in the doorway, standing there expectant. Her face was pink and a little vague from sleep, but she looked very dear and good. Though Nicholas had "lost himself" that night, he had kept time for thought; and perhaps he realized how precious a thing it is to lay up treasure of inheritance for one who loves us, and is truly of our kind. He turned quite meekly to the doctor.

"Should you think," he inquired, "should you think pa'son would be up an' dressed?"

Ten minutes thereafter, the two were knocking at the parson's door.

Confused and turbulent as Tiverton had become, Nicholas Oldfield settled her at once. Knowledge dripped from his finger-ends; he had it ready, like oil to give a clock. Doctor and minister stood breathless while he laid out the track for the procession by local marks they both knew well.

"They must ha' come into the town from som'er's nigh the old cross-road," said he. "No, 't wa'n't where they made the river road. Then they turned straight to one side—'t was thick woods then, you understand—an' went up a little ways towards Horn o' the Moon. But they concluded that wouldn't suit 'em, 't was so barren-like; an' they wheeled round, took what's now the old turnpike, an' clim' right up Tiverton Hill, through Tiverton Street that now is. An' there"—Nicholas Oldfield's eyes burned like blue flame, and again he told the story of the Flat-iron Lot.

"Indeed!" cried the parson. "What a truly remarkable circumstance! We might halt on that very spot, and offer prayer, before entering the church."

"'Pears as if that would be about the rights on't," said Nicholas quietly. "That is, if anybody wanted to plan it out jest as 't was." He could free his words from the pride of life, but not his voice; it quivered and betrayed him.

"Your idea would be to have the services before going down for the Indian raid?" inquired the doctor. "They're all at logger-heads there."

But Nicholas, hearing how neither faction would forego its glory, had the remedy ready in a cranny of his brain.

"Well," said he, "you know there was a raid in '53, when both sides gi'n up an' run. A crazed creatur on a white horse galloped up an' dispersed 'em. He was all wropped up in a sheet, and carried a jack-o'-lantern on a pole over his head, so 't he seemed more'n nine feet high. The settlers thought 't was a spirit; an' as for the Injuns, Lord knows what 't was to them. 'T any rate, the raid was over."

"Heaven be praised!" cried the doctor fervently. "Allah is great, and you, Mr. Oldfield, are his prophet. Stay here and coach the parson while I start up the town."

The doctor dashed home and mounted his horse. It was said that he did some tall riding that day. From door to door he galloped, a lesser Paul Revere, but sowing seeds of harmony. It was true that the soil was ready. Indians in full costume were lurking down cellar or behind kitchen doors, swearing they would never ride, but tremblingly eager to be urged. Settlers, gloomily acquiescent in an unjust fate, brightened at his heralding. The ghost was the thing. It took the popular fancy; and everybody wondered, as after all illuminings of genius, why nobody had thought of it before. Brad Freeman was unanimously elected to act the part, as the only living man likely to manage a supplementary head without rehearsal; and Pillsbury's white colt was hastily groomed for the onslaught. Brad had at once seen the possibilities of the situation and decided, with an unerring certainty, that as a jack-o'-lantern is naught by day, the pumpkin face must be cunningly veiled. He was a busy man that morning; for he not only had to arrange his own ghostly progress, but settle the elephant on its platform, to be dragged by vine-wreathed oxen, and also, at the doctor's instigation, to make the sledge on which the first Nicholas Oldfield should draw his wife into town. The doctor sought out Young Nick, and asked him to undertake the part, as tribute to his illustrious name; but he was of a prudent nature and declined. What if the town should laugh! "I guess I won't," said he.

But Mary, regardless of maternal cacklings, sped after the doctor as he turned his horse.

"O doctor!" she besought, "let me be the first settler's wife! Please, please let me be Mary Oldfield!"

The doctor was glad enough. All the tides of destiny were surging his way. Even when he paused, in his progress, to pull the Crane boy's tooth, it seemed to work out public harmony. For the victim, cannily anxious to prove his valor, insisted on having the operation conducted before the front window; and after it was accomplished, the squads of boys waiting at the gate for his apotheosis or down-fall, gave an unwilling yet delighted yell. He had not winced; and when, with the fire of a dear ambition still shining in his eyes, he held up the tooth to them, through the glass, they realized that he, and he only, could with justice take the crown of that most glorious day. He must ride inside the elephant.

So it came to pass that when the procession wound slowly up from the cross-road, preceded by the elephant, lifting his trunk at rhythmic intervals, Nicholas Oldfield saw his little Mary, her eyes shining and her cheeks aglow, sitting proudly upon a sledge, drawn by the handsomest young man in town. A pang may have struck the old man's heart, realizing that Phil Marden was so splendid in his strength, and that he wore so sweet a look of invitation; but he remembered Mary's vow and was content. A great pride and peace enwrapped him when the procession halted at the Flat-Iron Lot, and the minister, lifting up his voice, explained to the townspeople why they were called upon to pause. The name of Oldfield sounded clearly on the air.

"Now," said the minister, "let us pray." The petition went forth, and Mr. Oldfield stood brooding there, his thoughts running back through a long chain of ancestry to the Almighty, Who is the fount of all.

When heads were covered again, and this little world began to surge into the church, young Nick's Hattie moved closer to her husband and shot out a sibilant whisper:—

"Did you know that?—about the Flat-Iron Lot?"

Young Nick shook his head. He was entirely dazed.

"Well," continued Hattie, full of awe, "I guess I never was nearer my end than when I let myself be go-between for Freeman Henry. I wonder father let me get out alive."

The minister's address was very short and unpretending. He dwelt on the sacredness of the past, and all its memories, and closed by saying that, while we need not shrink from signs of progress, we should guard against tampering with those ancient landmarks which serve as beacon lights, to point the brighter way. Hearing that, every man steeled his heart against Memory-of-Me clocks, and resolved to vote against them. Then the minister explained that, since he had been unable to prepare a suitable address, Mr. Oldfield had kindly consented to read some precious records recently discovered by him. A little rustling breath went over the audience. So this amiable lunacy had its bearing on the economy of life! They were amazed, as may befall us at any judgment day, when grays are strangely alchemized to white.

Mr. Oldfield, unmoved as ever, save in a certain dominating quality of presence, rose and stood before them, the records in his hands. He read them firmly, explaining here and there, his simple speech untouched by finer usage; and when the minister interposed a question, he dropped into such quaintness of rich legendry that his hearers sat astounded. So they were a part of the world! and not the world to-day, but the universe in its making.

It was long before Nicholas concluded; but the time seemed brief. He sat down, and the minister took the floor. He thanked Mr. Oldfield and then went on to say that, although it might be informal, he would suggest that the town, with Mr. Oldfield's permission, place an inscription on the boulder in the Flat-Iron Lot, stating why it was to be held historically sacred. The town roared and stamped, but meanwhile Nicholas Oldfield was quietly rising.

"In that case, pa'son," said he, "I should like to state that it would be my purpose to make over that lot to the town to be held as public land forever."

Again the village folk outdid themselves in applause, while Young Nick muttered, "Well, I vum!" beneath his breath, and Hattie replied, antiphonally, "My soul!" These were not the notes of mere surprise. They were prayers for guidance in this exigency of finding a despised intelligence exalted.

The celebration went on to a victorious close. Who shall sing the sweetness of Isabel North, as she sat by the log-cabin door, placidly spinning flax, or the horror of the moment when, redskins swooping down on her and settlers on them, the ghost swept in and put them all to flight? Who will ever forget the exercises in the hall, when the "Suwanee River" was sung by minstrels, to a set of tableaux representing the "old folks" at their cabin door, "playin' wid my brudder" as a game of stick-knife, and the "Swanny" River itself by a frieze of white pasteboard swans in the background? There were patriotic songs, accompanied by remarks laudatory of England; since it was justly felt that our mother-land might be wounded if, on an occasion of this sort, we fomented international differences by "America" or the reminiscent triumph of "The Sword of Bunker Hill." A very noble sentiment pervaded Tiverton when, at twilight, little groups of tired and very happy people lingered here and there before "harnessing up" and betaking themselves to their homes. The homes themselves meant more to them now, not as shelters, but as sacred shrines; and many a glance sought out Nicholas Oldfield standing quietly by—the reverential glance accorded those who find out unsuspected wealth. Young Nick approached his father with an awkwardness sitting more heavily upon him than usual.

"Well," said he, "I'm mighty glad you gi'n 'em that lot."

Old Nicholas nodded gravely, and at that moment Hattie came up, all in a flutter.

"Father," said she quite appealingly, "I wisht you'd come over to supper. Luella an' Freeman Henry'll be there. It's a great day, an'"—

"Yes, I know 't is," answered Nicholas kindly. "I'm much obleeged, but Mary's goin' to eat with me. Mebbe we might look in, along in the evenin'. Come, Mary!"

Mary, very sweet in her plain dress and white kerchief, was talking with young Marden, her husband for the day; but she turned about contentedly.

"Yes, gran'ther," said she, without a look behind, "I'm coming!"



THE END OF ALL LIVING

The First Church of Tiverton stands on a hill, whence it overlooks the little village, with one or two pine-shaded neighborhoods beyond, and, when the air is clear, a thin blue line of upland delusively like the sea. Set thus austerely aloft, it seems now a survival of the day when men used to go to meeting gun in hand, and when one stayed, a lookout by the door, to watch and listen. But this the present dwellers do not remember. Conceding not a sigh to the holy and strenuous past, they lament—and the more as they grow older—the stiff climb up the hill, albeit to rest in so sweet a sanctuary at the top. For it is sweet indeed. A soft little wind seems always to be stirring there, on summer Sundays a messenger of good. It runs whispering about, and wafts in all sorts of odors: honey of the milk-weed and wild rose, and a Christmas tang of the evergreens just below. It carries away something, too—scents calculated to bewilder the thrift-hunting bee: sometimes a whiff of peppermint from an old lady's pew, but oftener the breath of musk and southernwood, gathered in ancient gardens, and borne up here to embroider the preacher's drowsy homilies, and remind us, when we faint, of the keen savor of righteousness.

Here in the church do we congregate from week to week; but behind it, on a sloping hillside, is the last home of us all, the old burying-ground, overrun with a briery tangle, and relieved by Nature's sweet and cunning hand from the severe decorum set ordinarily about the dead. Our very faithlessness has made it fair. There was a time when we were a little ashamed of it. We regarded it with affection, indeed, but affection of the sort accorded some rusty relative who has lain too supine in the rut of years. Thus, with growing ambition came, in due course, the project of a new burying-ground. This we dignified, even in common speech; it was always grandly "the Cemetery." While it lay unrealized in the distance, the home of our forbears fell into neglect, and Nature marched in, according to her lavishness, and adorned what we ignored. The white alder crept farther and farther from its bounds; tansy and wild rose rioted in profusion, and soft patches of violets smiled to meet the spring. Here were, indeed, great riches, "a little of everything" that pasture life affords: a hardy bed of checkerberry, crimson strawberries nodding on long stalks, and in one sequestered corner the beloved Linnaea. It seemed a consecrated pasture shut off from daily use, and so given up to pleasantness that you could scarcely walk there without setting foot on some precious outgrowth of the spring, or pushing aside a summer loveliness better made for wear.

Ambition had its fulfillment. We bought our Cemetery, a large, green tract, quite square, and lying open to the sun. But our pendulum had swung too wide. Like many folk who suffer from one discomfort, we had gone to the utmost extreme and courted another. We were tired of climbing hills, and so we pressed too far into the lowland; and the first grave dug in our Cemetery showed three inches of water at the bottom. It was in "Prince's new lot," and there his young daughter was to lie. But her lover had stood by while the men were making the grave; and, looking into the ooze below, he woke to the thought of her fair young body there.

"God!" they heard him say, "she sha'n't lay so. Leave it as it is, an' come up into the old buryin'-ground. There's room enough by me."

The men, all mates of his, stopped work without a glance and followed him; and up there in the dearer shrine her place was made. The father said but a word at her changed estate. Neighbors had hurried in to bring him the news; he went first to the unfinished grave in the Cemetery, and then strode up the hill, where the men had not yet done. After watching them for a while in silence, he turned aside; but he came back to drop a trembling hand upon the lover's arm.

"I guess," he said miserably, "she'd full as lieves lay here by you."

And she will be quite beside him, though, in the beaten ways of earth, others have come between. For years he lived silently and apart; but when his mother died, and he and his father were left staring at the dulled embers of life, he married a good woman, who perhaps does not deify early dreams; yet she is tender of them, and at the death of her own child it was she who went toiling up to the graveyard, to see that its little place did not encroach too far. She gave no reason, but we all knew it was because she meant to let her husband lie there by the long-loved guest.

Naturally enough, after this incident of the forsaken grave, we conceived a strange horror of the new Cemetery, and it has remained deserted to this day. It is nothing but a meadow now, with that one little grassy hollow in it to tell a piteous tale. It is mown by any farmer who chooses to take it for a price; but we regard it differently from any other plot of ground. It is "the Cemetery," and always will be. We wonder who has bought the grass. "Eli's got the Cemetery this year," we say. And sometimes awe-stricken little squads of school children lead one another there, hand in hand, to look at the grave where Annie Prince was going to be buried when her beau took her away. They never seem to connect that heart-broken wraith of a lover with the bent farmer who goes to and fro driving the cows. He wears patched overalls, and has sciatica in winter; but I have seen the gleam of youth awakened, though remotely, in his eyes. I do not believe he ever quite forgets; there are moments, now and then, at dusk or midnight, all his for poring over those dulled pages of the past.

After we had elected to abide by our old home, we voted an enlargement of its bounds; and thereby hangs a tale of outlawed revenge. Long years ago "old Abe Eaton" quarreled with his twin brother, and vowed, as the last fiat of an eternal divorce, "I won't be buried in the same yard with ye!"

The brother died first; and because he lay within a little knoll beside the fence, Abe willfully set a public seal on that iron oath by purchasing a strip of land outside, wherein he should himself be buried. Thus they would rest in a hollow correspondence, the fence between. It all fell out as he ordained, for we in Tiverton are cheerfully willing to give the dead their way. Lax enough is the helpless hand in the fictitious stiffness of its grasp; and we are not the people to deny it holding, by courtesy at least. Soon enough does the sceptre of mortality crumble and fall. So Abe was buried according to his wish. But when necessity commanded us to add unto ourselves another acre, we took in his grave with it, and the fence, falling into decay, was never renewed. There he lies, in affectionate decorum, beside the brother he hated; and thus does the greater good wipe out the individual wrong.

So now, as in ancient times, we toil steeply up here, with the dead upon his bier; for not often in Tiverton do we depend on that uncouth monstrosity, the hearse. It is not that we do not own one,—a rigid box of that name has belonged to us now for many a year; and when Sudleigh came out with a new one, plumes, trappings, and all, we broached the idea of emulating her. But the project fell through after Brad Freeman's contented remark that he guessed the old one would last us out. He "never heard no complaint from anybody 't ever rode in it." That placed our last journey on a homely, humorous basis, and we smiled, and reflected that we preferred going up the hill borne by friendly hands, with the light of heaven falling on our coffin-lids.

The antiquary would set much store by our headstones, did he ever find them out. Certain of them are very ancient, according to our ideas; for they came over from England, and are now fallen into the grayness of age. They are woven all over with lichens, and the blackberry binds them fast. Well, too, for them! They need the grace of some such veiling; for most of them are alive, even to this day, with warning skulls, and awful cherubs compounded of bleak, bald faces and sparsely feathered wings. One discovery, made there on a summer day, has not, I fancy, been duplicated in another New England town. On six of the larger tombstones are carved, below the grass level, a row of tiny imps, grinning faces and humanized animals. Whose was the hand that wrought? The Tivertonians know nothing about it. They say there was a certain old Veasey who, some eighty odd years ago, used to steal into the graveyard with his tools, and there, for love, scrape the mosses from the stones and chip the letters clear. He liked to draw, "creatur's" especially, and would trace them for children on their slates. He lived alone in a little house long since fallen, and he would eat no meat. That is all they know of him. I can guess but one thing more: that when no looker-on was by, he pushed away the grass, and wrote his little jokes, safe in the kindly tolerance of the dead. This was the identical soul who should, in good old days, have been carving gargoyles and misereres; here his only field was the obscurity of Tiverton churchyard, his only monument these grotesqueries so cunningly concealed.

We have epitaphs, too,—all our own as yet, for the world has not discovered them. One couple lies in well-to-do respectability under a tiny monument not much taller than the conventional gravestone, but shaped on a pretentious model.

"We'd ruther have it nice," said the builders, "even if there ain't much of it."

These were Eliza Marden and Peleg her husband, who worked from sun to sun, with scant reward save that of pride in their own forehandedness. I can imagine them as they drove to church in the open wagon, a couple portentously large and prosperous: their one child, Hannah, sitting between them, and glancing about her, in a flickering, intermittent way, at the pleasant holiday world. Hannah was no worker; she liked a long afternoon in the sun, her thin little hands busied about nothing weightier than crochet; and her mother regarded her with a horrified patience, as one who might some time be trusted to sow all her wild oats of idleness. The well-mated pair died within the same year, and it was Hannah who composed their epitaph, with an artistic accuracy, but a defective sense of rhyme:—

"Here lies Eliza She was a striver Here lies Peleg He was a select Man"

We townsfolk found something haunting and bewildering in the lines; they drew, and yet they baffled us, with their suggested echoes luring only to betray. Hannah never wrote anything else, but we always cherished the belief that she could do "'most anything" with words and their possibilities. Still, we accepted her one crowning achievement, and never urged her to further proof. In Tiverton we never look genius in the mouth. Nor did Hannah herself propose developing her gift. Relieved from the spur of those two unquiet spirits who had begotten her, she settled down to sit all day in the sun, learning new patterns of crochet; and having cheerfully let her farm run down, she died at last in a placid poverty.

Then there was Desire Baker, who belonged to the era of colonial hardship, and who, through a redundant punctuation, is relegated to a day still more remote. For some stone-cutter, scornful of working by the card, or born with an inordinate taste for periods, set forth, below her obiit, the astounding statement:—

"The first woman. She made the journey to Boston. By stage."

Here, too, are the ironies whereof departed life is prodigal. This is the tidy lot of Peter Merrick, who had a desire to stand well with the world, in leaving it, and whose purple and fine linen were embodied in the pomp of death. He was a cobbler, and he put his small savings together to erect a modest monument to his own memory. Every Sunday he visited it, "after meetin'," and perhaps his day-dreams, as he sat leather-aproned on his bench, were still of that white marble idealism. The inscription upon it was full of significant blanks; they seemed an interrogation of the destiny which governs man.

"Here lies Peter Merrick——" ran the unfinished scroll, "and his wife who died——"

But ambitious Peter never lay there at all; for in his later prime, with one flash of sharp desire to see the world, he went on a voyage to the Banks, and was drowned. And his wife? The story grows somewhat threadbare. She summoned his step-brother to settle the estate, and he, a marble-cutter by trade, filled in the date of Peter's death with letters English and illegible. In the process of their carving, the widow stood by, hands folded under her apron from the midsummer sun. The two got excellent well acquainted, and the stone-cutter prolonged his stay. He came again in a little over a year, at Thanksgiving time, and they were married. Which shows that nothing is certain in life,—no, not the proprieties of our leaving it,—and that even there we must walk softly, writing no boastful legend for time to annul.

At one period a certain quatrain had a great run in Tiverton; it was the epitaph of the day. Noting how it overspread that stony soil, you picture to yourself the modest pride of its composer; unless indeed, it had been copied from an older inscription in an English yard, and transplanted through the heart and brain of some settler whose thoughts were ever flitting back. Thus it runs in decorous metre:—

"Dear husband, now my life is passed, You have dearly loved me to the last. Grieve not for me, but pity take On my dear children for my sake."

But one sorrowing widower amended it, according to his wife's direction, so that it bore a new and significant meaning. He was charged to

"pity take On my dear parent for my sake."

The lesson was patent. His mother-in-law had always lived with him, and she was "difficult." Who knows how keenly the sick woman's mind ran on the possibilities of reef and quicksand for the alien two left alone without her guiding hand? So she set the warning of her love and fear to be no more forgotten while she herself should be remembered.

The husband was a silent man. He said very little about his intentions; performance was enough for him. Therefore it happened that his "parent," adopted perforce, knew nothing about this public charge until she came upon it, on her first Sunday visit, surveying the new glory of the stone. The story goes that she stood before it, a square, portentous figure in black alpaca and warlike mitts, and that she uttered these irrevocable words:—

"Pity on me! Well, I guess he won't! I'll go to the poor-farm fust!"

And Monday morning, spite of his loyal dissuasions, she packed her "blue chist," and drove off to a far-away cousin, who got her "nussin'" to do. Another lesson from the warning finger of Death: let what was life not dream that it can sway the life that is, after the two part company.

Not always were mothers-in-law such breakers of the peace. There is a story in Tiverton of one man who went remorsefully mad after his wife's death, and whose mind dwelt unceasingly on the things he had denied her. These were not many, yet the sum seemed to him colossal. It piled the Ossa of his grief. Especially did he writhe under the remembrance of certain blue dishes she had desired the week before her sudden death; and one night, driven by an insane impulse to expiate his blindness, he walked to town, bought them, and placed them in a foolish order about her grave. It was a puerile, crazy deed, but no one smiled, not even the little children who heard of it next day, on the way home from school, and went trudging up there to see. To their stirring minds it seemed a strange departure from the comfortable order of things, chiefly because their elders stood about with furtive glances at one another and murmurs of "Poor creatur'!" But one man, wiser than the rest, "harnessed up," and went to tell the dead woman's mother, a mile away. Jonas was "shackled;" he might "do himself a mischief." In the late afternoon, the guest so summoned walked quietly into the silent house, where Jonas sat by the window, beating one hand incessantly upon the sill, and staring at the air. His sister, also, had come; she was frightened, however, and had betaken herself to the bedroom, to sob. But in walked this little plump, soft-footed woman, with her banded hair, her benevolent spectacles, and her atmosphere of calm.

"I guess I'll blaze a fire, Jonas," said she. "You step out an' git me a mite o' kindlin'."

The air of homely living enwrapped him once again, and mechanically, with the inertia of old habit, he obeyed. They had a "cup o' tea" together; and then, when the dishes were washed, and the peaceful twilight began to settle down upon them like a sifting mist, she drew a little rocking chair to the window where he sat opposite, and spoke.

"Jonas," said she, in that still voice which had been harmonized by the experiences of life, "arter dark, you jest go up an' bring home them blue dishes. Mary's got an awful lot o' fun in her, an' if she ain't laughin' over that, I'm beat. Now, Jonas, you do it! Do you s'pose she wants them nice blue pieces out there through wind an' weather? She'd ruther by half see 'em on the parlor cluzzet shelves; an' if you'll fetch 'em home, I'll scallop some white paper, jest as she liked, an' we'll set 'em up there."

Jonas wakened a little from his mental swoon. Life seemed warmer, more tangible, again.

"Law, do go," said the mother soothingly. "She don't want the whole township tramplin' up there to eye over her chiny. Make her as nervous as a witch. Here's the ha'-bushel basket, an' some paper to put between 'em. You go, Jonas, an' I'll clear off the shelves."

So Jonas, whether he was tired of guiding the impulses of his own unquiet mind, or whether he had become a child again, glad to yield to the maternal, as we all do in our grief, took the basket and went. He stood by, still like a child, while this comfortable woman put the china on the shelves, speaking warmly, as she worked, of the pretty curving of the cups, and her belief that the pitcher was "one you could pour out of." She stayed on at the house, and Jonas, through his sickness of the mind, lay back upon her soothing will as a baby lies in its mother's arms. But the china was never used, even when he had come to his normal estate, and bought and sold as before. The mother's prescience was too keen for that.

Here in this ground are the ambiguities of life carried over into that other state, its pathos and its small misunderstandings. This was a much-married man whose last spouse had been a triple widow. Even to him the situation proved mathematically complex, and the sumptuous stone to her memory bears the dizzying legend that "Enoch Nudd who erects this stone is her fourth husband and his fifth wife." Perhaps it was the exigencies of space which brought about this amazing elision; but surely, in its very apparent intention, there is only a modest pride. For indubitably the much-married may plume themselves upon being also the widely sought. If it is the crown of sex to be desired, here you have it, under seal of the civil bond. No baseless, windy boasting that "I might an if I would!" Nay, here be the marriage ties to testify.

In this pleasant, weedy corner is a little white stone, not so long erected. "I shall arise in thine image," runs the inscription; and reading it, you shall remember that the dust within belonged to a little hunchback, who played the fiddle divinely, and had beseeching eyes. With that cry he escaped from the marred conditions of the clay. Here, too (for this is a sort of bachelor nook), is the grave of a man whom we unconsciously thrust into a permanent masquerade. Years and years ago he broke into a house,—an unknown felony in our quiet limits,—and was incontinently shot. The burglar lost his arm, and went about at first under a cloud of disgrace and horror, which became, with healing of the public conscience, a veil of sympathy. After his brief imprisonment indoors, during the healing of the mutilated stump, he came forth among us again, a man sadder and wiser in that he had learned how slow and sure may be the road to wealth. He had sown his wild oats in one night's foolish work, and now he settled down to doing such odd jobs as he might with one hand. We got accustomed to his loss. Those of us who were children when it happened never really discovered that it was disgrace at all; we called it misfortune, and no one said us nay. Then one day it occurred to us that he must have been shot "in the war," and so, all unwittingly to himself, the silent man became a hero. We accepted him. He was part of our poetic time, and when he died, we held him still in remembrance among those who fell worthily. When Decoration Day was first observed in Tiverton, one of us thought of him, and dropped some apple blossoms on his grave; and so it had its posy like the rest, although it bore no flag. It was the doctor who set us right there. "I wouldn't do that," he said, withholding the hand of one unthinking child; and she took back her flag. But she left the blossoms, and, being fond of precedent, we still do the same; unless we stop to think, we know not why. You may say there is here some perfidy to the republic and the honored dead, or at least some laxity of morals. We are lax, indeed, but possibly that is why we are so kind. We are not willing to "hurt folks' feelings" even when they have migrated to another star; and a flower more or less from the overplus given to men who made the greater choice will do no harm, tossed to one whose soul may be sitting, like Lazarus, at their riches' gate.

But of all these fleeting legends made to hold the soul a moment on its way, and keep it here in fickle permanence, one is more dramatic than all, more charged with power and pathos. Years ago there came into Tiverton an unknown man, very handsome, showing the marks of high breeding, and yet in his bearing strangely solitary and remote. He wore a cloak, and had a foreign look. He came walking into the town one night, with dust upon his shoes, and we judged that he had been traveling a long time. He had the appearance of one who was not nearly at his journey's end, and would pass through the village, continuing on a longer way. He glanced at no one, but we all stared at him. He seemed, though we had not the words to put it so, an exiled prince. He went straight through Tiverton Street until he came to the parsonage; and something about it (perhaps its garden, hot with flowers, larkspur, coreopsis, and the rest) detained his eye, and he walked in. Next day the old doctor was there also with his little black case, but we were none the wiser for that; for the old doctor was of the sort who intrench themselves in a professional reserve. You might draw up beside the road to question him, but you could as well deter the course of nature. He would give the roan a flick, and his sulky would flash by.

"What's the matter with so-and-so?" would ask a mousing neighbor.

"He's sick," ran the laconic reply.

"Goin' to die?" one daring querist ventured further.

"Some time," said the doctor.

But though he assumed a right to combat thus the outer world, no one was gentler with a sick man or with those about him in their grief. To the latter he would speak; but he used to say he drew his line at second cousins.

Into his hands and the true old parson's fell the stranger's confidence, if confidence it were. He may have died solitary and unexplained; but no matter what he said, his story was safe. In a week he was carried out for burial; and so solemn was the parson's manner as he spoke a brief service over him, so thrilling his enunciation of the words "our brother," that we dared not even ask what else he should be called. And we never knew. The headstone, set up by the parson, bore the words "Peccator Maximus." For a long time we thought they made the stranger's name, and judged that he must have been a foreigner; but a new schoolmistress taught us otherwise. It was Latin, she said, and it meant "the chiefest among sinners." When that report flew round, the parson got wind of it, and then, in the pulpit one morning, he announced that he felt it necessary to say that the words had been used "at our brother's request," and that it was his own decision to write below them, "For this cause came I into the world."

We have accepted the stranger as we accept many things in Tiverton. Parson and doctor kept his secret well. He is quite safe from our questioning; but for years I expected a lady, always young and full of grief, to seek out his grave and shrive him with her tears. She will not appear now, unless she come as an old, old woman, to lie beside him. It is too late.

One more record of our vanished time,—this full of poesy only, and the pathos of farewell. It was not the aged and heartsick alone who lay down here to rest. We have been no more fortunate than others. Youth and beauty came also, and returned no more. This, where the white rose-bush grows untended, was the young daughter of a squire in far-off days: too young to have known the pangs of love or the sweet desire of Death, save that, in primrose time, he always paints himself so fair. I have thought the inscription must have been borrowed from another grave, in some yard shaded by yews and silent under the cawing of the rooks; perhaps, from its stiffness, translated from a stately Latin verse. This it is, snatched not too soon from oblivion; for a few more years will wear it quite away:—

"Here lies the purple flower of a maid Having to envious Death due tribute paid. Her sudden Loss her Parents did lament, And all her Friends with grief their hearts did Rent. Life's short. Your wicked Lives amend with care, For Mortals know we Dust and Shadows are."

"The purple flower of a maid!" All the blossomy sweetness, the fragrant lamenting of Lycidas, lies in that one line. Alas, poor love-lies-bleeding! And yet not poor according to the barren pity we accord the dead, but dowered with another youth set like a crown upon the unstained front of this. Not going with sparse blossoms ripened or decayed, but heaped with buds and dripping over in perfume. She seems so sweet in her still loveliness, the empty promise of her balmy spring, that for a moment fain are you to snatch her back into the pageant of your day. Reading that phrase, you feel the earth is poorer for her loss. And yet not so, since the world holds other greater worlds as well. Elsewhere she may have grown to age and stature; but here she lives yet in beauteous permanence,—as true a part of youth and joy and rapture as the immortal figures on the Grecian Urn. While she was but a flying phantom on the frieze of time, Death fixed her there forever,—a haunting spirit in perennial bliss.

THE END