University of California Berkeley The Theodore H. Koundakjian Collection of American Humor cis AMD. OTHER 'STORIES. MARIETTA HDLLEY [AUTHOR OF THE'JOSIAH ALIENS WiFE'5.''BooKSJ WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY T AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO. HARTFORD MISS RICHAEDS' BOY, AND OTHER STORIES. BY MARIETTA HOLLEY, AUTHOR OF XHK JOSIAH ALLEN'S V/IFJIS BOOKS. "WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY TRTJK AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY, HARTFORD, CONN. 1883. COPYRIGHT BY MARIETTA HOLLEY, 1883. All rights reserved. /S83 * TO HER MEMORY WHOSE LOVE I CANNOT THINK HAS VANISHED WITH HER PRESENCE, THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS TENDERLY INSCRIBED BY HER DAUGHTER, THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. WHEN publishing a new book it is a custom of authors to say a few words, perhaps to bespeak the gentle good will of the public to the new venture they are sending out in hope. In publishing these little stories of country life, although I am well aware their merit is not great, yet the cordial friendliness, and too generous appreciation which met my former books, makes me hope that same public will deal gently with the faults of this. As in my former books, the characters are all from the land of No- where, a realm in which I delight. It was suggested to me by one whose interest in the book is only next to my own, that as the belief was quite universal that "Josiah Allen's Wife's" books were written by a member of the stronger sex, it would be advisable to have my portrait appear in this volume. The belief was of course very flattering to me, but perhaps it is only right to hereby resign the " burden of an honor unto which I was not born." In conclusion, I wish to thank again the kind friends seen and unseen whose earnest words of praise and encouragement have been the pleasantest reward of authorship. MARIETTA HOLLEY, Adams, N. Y. CONTENTS. Miss RICHARDS' BOY, 17 i / THE OUTCAST, 73 THE DESERTED WIVES, .... 37 MRS. WIXGATE'S CHARITY, . 10 7 FAITH WINSLOW, .... 129 TRUE UNTO DEATH, ... . 149 CECIL VAIL, ^ THE DORCAS SOCIETY, ... 221 BELINDA, CAROLINE, AND HENRIETTA. ... 241 LITTLE CHRISTIE'S WILL, 261 JOHN'S WIFE, ...... 283 THE PLAIN Miss PAGE, . . 299 Miss HIGGINS' MAN, ... . 317 KATE'S WEDDING GIFT 327 KITTY Ross, o^r O4O A WOMAN'S HEART, 365 KATY AVENAL, ....... 337 (ix) ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE. 1. PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR, ....... Frontispiece. 2. ILLUMINATED TITLE PAGE, ....... 1 3. THE " CORSET " MAKES TROUBLE, . . . (Full Page,) . 15 4. Miss RICHARDS' BOY (Title), . . ... 17 5. PRISCILLA ANN COBB, ........ 19 6. HE STOPPED THE WAGON, ....... 21 7. JEREMIAH CAPELIN, ........ 22 8. JANE TOMPKINS, ........ 27 9. THE " CORSET," ........ 28 10. CREVELAND HALL, ........ 31 11. CLAUDE RICHARDS, . . . . . . . .34 12. "I HAVE BEEN A WRETCH," ....... 36 13. AT THE HALL, ......... 40 14. THE REFUSAL, ......... 44 15. THE DREAM, ......... 46 16. AND so HE DISAPPEARED, ....... 51 17. I FELT MYSELF LIFTED UP, ....... 53 18. WE STOOD IN THE SWEET MOONLIGHT, ..... 63 19. TAIL PIECE, ....... 71 20. "WHAT DO You MEAN?" .... (Full Page,) 72 21. THE OUTCAST (Title), ... 73 22. THE OUTCAST, ..... 77 23. STRANGE COMPANIONS, ... . 78 24. "LOOK AT YOUR WORK," ... ... 80 25. HE HEARD A LAD SINGING, ... 81 26. THE GOOD BOOK, .... ... 85 (xi) x ii ILLUSTRATIONS. 27. THE IJi ; i: (Full Page,) . 86 28. THE DESERTED WIVES (Title), ...... 87 29. "DAKK, 92 80. "Hi:u KL'FAXT." ........ 93 81. MRS. FOSTER CAUGHT HER TO HER BREAST, .... 94 82. MRS. FOSTER WAS NOT DEAD, ...... 99 33. THE SEARCH, . .... 100 34. TAIL PIECE, ......... 104 85. MABEL WING ATE, ..... (Full Page,) . 106 86. MRS. WINGATE'S CHARITY, ....... 107 87. GIVING HIM POINTS, . . . . . . . 117 88. TOM, . 119 39. So OUT IN THE COLD WENT TOM, .... 122 40. THE LITTLE SUFFERER, ..... 125 41. TAIL PIECE, . m 42. FAITH WINSLOW, . . . (Full Page,) . 128 4::. FAITH WINSLOW (Title), ..... 129 44. THE INQUIRY, ....... 134 r> " Vi:s, I AM TIRED, JOHN," .... 139 46. THE OLD SONG, 144 47. TAIL PIECE, . 147 ' II i: is COMING!" . . (Full Page), 148 49. TRUE UNTO DEATH (Title), ... 149 50. "Mrsi: MY LORD HAMMOND," 153 '' Mv '"'" \- ". '. 156 \\ VTCHIXO AND WAITING, ... 162 OH. RICHARD! RICHARD!" . . 167 54. TA, ,,,-,,,,. .-..--. 169 A !'><>,)v ,x THE SNOW, . . . (FullPage) 170 ( MII- VAIL (Title), m Oui s 1 1. 1- MOTHER, . . t 58. WATCIHNG THE SUNSET, . 17 ^ 59. TELLING STORIES, . IbML DAGGETT, 81. Tm. " SWEET STORY OF OLD," 82. PUTTIN' HER OUT, ILLUSTRATIONS. xiii PAGE. 63. HAPPY MOMENTS, . . . . . . . .185 64. TIPPECANOE, ......... 186 65. ASPIRE DINOMAN, ........ 187 66. THE MANUSCRIPTS, ........ 190 67. POLLY ANN HAWKINS, . . . . . . . .191 68. I COME A PURPOSE, . . . . . . . .192 69. A FRIENDLY ACT, ........ 195 70. GIVING UP His SEAT, ........ 198 71. TIP'S MISFORTUNE, ........ 203 72. BAD NEWS, ......... 207 73. THE MEETING, . . .... 210 74. THE AFFRAY, .... .... 211 75. NORA VAIL CHESTER, . . . . . . . .217 76. TAIL-PIECE, ......... 218 77. "HE WAITED TO SEE No MORE," . . (Full Page), . . 220 78. THE DORCAS SOCIETY (Title), . . . . . . .221 79. " THAT FELLER," .... ... 224 80. PAUL'S ANTICIPATION, ........ 227 81. THE LETTER "M.," ........ 228 82. A FAVORABLE CONCLUSION, ....... 234 83. TAIL-PIECE, ....... .238 84. PERPLEXING QUESTIONS, . . . (Full Page), . 240 85. BELINDA, CAROLINE, AND HENRIETTA (Title), . . . .241 86. BELINDA READS THE LETTER, ...... 247 87. "!T DON'T LOOK WELL," . .... 250 88. HOPE AT THE ORGAN, ........ 25:* 89. THE THREE DRABBLED DAMSELS, . .... 257 90. TAIL-PIECE, .... .... 258 91. MY HEART WAS EN MY THROAT, . . (Full Page), . . 260 92. LITTLE CHRISTIE'S WILL (Title), ... 261 93. "TAKE MY SEAT, COLONEL,". . 263 94. JUDITH, 265 95. LITTLE CHRISTIE, ........ 266 96. I STOOD LOOKING DOWN UPON HEII, ..... 268 97. UNDER THE PALM TREE, . ..... 270 98. "On! WHAT A TIME THAT WAS," ...... 272 xiv ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE. 99. Tin. PKOMI-K. . . 276 100. TAIL i-iLii:. 101. I'ut DKNCK WINFIELD, . . (Full Page), . . 282 102. JOHN'S WIFE (Title), . 103. COLD COMFORT, . ...... 284 104. JOHN'S WIFE, . 289 105. ' I'VE Tt MMED TO FIND You," 294 106. TAIL-PIECE, ... . 296 KI?. I'M AND "MiT PADIE," ... . (Full Page), . 298 108. PLAIN Miss PAGE (Title), . ... 299 109. PULINK, . .... . .301 110. THE HOVEL, .... . . . . .302 111. THE BURIAL . . .304 112. AND THE Low SWEET WORDS, . . . .. .305 113. THE PROPOSAL, . . . . . . . . .313 114. TAIL-PIECE, . . . . . . ... .314 115. THE MEETING, . . . (Full Page), . . 316 116. Miss HIGGINS' MAN (Title), ....... 317 117. -'O- -H!" .319 118. HE HELPED HIMSELF GENEROUSLY, . ..... 321 119. AFTER THE RUNAWAY, ....... 324 120. TAIL-PIECE, ......... 325 101. KATE'S WEDDING GIFT, . . . (Full Page), . . 326 100. KATE'S WEDDING GIFT (Title), ...... 327 ' IT MAKES ME FEEL BAD, CATHERINE," . . . . .328 101. NATHAN'S APPROACH, . . . . . ... .336 125. TAIL-PIECE, . ...... 342 I or,. KITTY Ross, . ... (Full Page), . .344 107 KITTY Ross (Title), . . . . . . . . 355 128. THE BLAZING STAR, .... 346 129. Msa Ross 347 130. THE HAPPY FAMILY, 352 131. THK RUNAWAY, .... 357 132. A SENSATION, ... 361 138. TAIL-PIECE, ... 36 2 134. BEATIUCE MANNING, . (Full Page)j 364 ILLU8TRATI<>\*. xv PAGE. 135. A WOMAN'S HEART (Title), . . 365 136. GRACE AND THE CHII.HKKX, . . 368 137. TELLING HER FORTUNE, . . 376 133. PLAIN TALK, , .380 139. " LET ME Go WITH You, " . .... 383 140. TAIL-FIKCK, . ... 385 141. "THERE SHE is," .... (FullPagc), . . 386 142. KATY AVENAL (Title), . ..... 387 143. ROB, 389 144. "A RUNNIN' DOWN," ........ 392 145. MRS. WESCOTT, . . ..... 395 146. THE FIRST VISIT, ........ 397 147. PAST GLORIES, ......... 402 148. TAIL-PIECE, 410 "COKSKT" MAKES TROUBLE. WAS only seventeen, when the death of my guardian left me quite homeless. I was an orphan, confided to his care, in my babyhood, by my father, who had been a college chum and close friend. And while my guardian lived I never knew the want of the fatherly protection I had lost so early, or the mother-love I had never known. He was very wealthy, cultured, and refined, and he surrounded my young life with beauty and luxury. And so, when, at his death, which occurred very suddenly, his property all passed to a distant, and, as I fancied, in my disappointment, a rather stony-hearted relative, it was a great shock to me. It was like walking, by one step, from a flowering, blooming garden into a desert. I think, indeed I know, that he meant to have made some provision for my future. The lawyer said so; said he had often spoken of it. He intended to will half of his property to me, but the papers were not made out. And so, friendless and poor, I was left in the world to fight its battles alone. Only seventeen ! Young shoulders to bear the burdens of care and labor that so suddenly fell upon them. 2 (IT) lg MISS RICHARDS' BOY. \\V had lived in a very secluded manner, and I had very few acquaintances, but I had read many novels, and was as romantic and sentimental as their teachings and my solitary, dreamy life could make me. I had never been to school, and so I had not even school-girl friendships to help sustain me in my loneliness. I had had a governess until the last year, a kind woman, to whom I had become much attached; and, in my first desolation and dismay, I thought of her as a possible refuge. But after-thought told me she was a paid dependent, now in another family, and I could not possibly go to her. What was I to do ? This hard question, that so many have confronted, stared me in the face the last thing at night and the first in the morning. I was not fitted for teacher in any high department. I was to have gone away to school, to remain until I graduated, at one of the first young ladies' seminaries in the country. My guardian had written to the principal the day he was taken sick ; but that was all past now. My education, as far as it had gone, was good, for my governess was thorough and conscientious. But I knew, incomplete as it was, and with my youth and inexperience, I could not compete with the experienced, successful teachers who were so readily to be found. I could play the piano well enough for an amateur, but not well enough to teach others. And as for the last resort of destitute ladyhood, fine sewing, I said to myself, one day, as I sat despairingly looking into the future, I could as soon engineer a railroad as to make a fine shirt. But by some subtle connection of thought between my last despairing idea and a memory of the past, the recollection of my nurse came to me, the woman who had been like a mother to me till I was ten years old. I thought how kindly she would look up at me from her sewing when I was good, and how she would occasionally tap me on the head with her silver-top thimble, when I was inclined to be noisy and rude. But, after all, how she loved me ; and I remembered that she told me, when she went away, "if ever in want of a friend, do not forget Priscilla Ann Cobb." Surely, that time had come. MISS RICHARDS' BOY. 19 I knew, at the time she left here, that a small property had fallen to her from a dis- she had gone to farm. She was a entertained at that sion to men. True, brought changes ; married, and for- at all events, it to write to her, would receive me, what to do. So I of my lonely, for- ing her if she could TRISCILLA ANN COBB. taut relative, and live on her own maiden lady, who time a strong aver- years might have she might have gotten me. But, would do no harm and maybe she until I could think wrote, telling her lorn state, and ask- receive me for a short time, and if there was any employment near her that I could get,, for I should be unhappy if I were dependent upon any one, even my kind old nurse. In due time the answer came. The letter was long, and although the spelling was bad, the spirit was good; kindness breathed through every word. She answered me "that the house and heart of P. A. Cobb was open and waitin' for me. It would be the happiest day she had spent for years, when she see the little girl that had growed into her heart so tight a comin' through her front gate. She thought some persons might have looked out for me a little better, and, out of such a big property, laid up a little for one they had always carried the idea they thought the world of. Howsumever, she hadn't any reflections to cast upon anybody here, or in any other world whatsumever. My guardian was a man who had his properties, and was agreeabler than most men ; and, thank her fortin', she wasn't tied to none of 'em whatsumever, and hadn't no man about her premises to say to her, 4 Why do ye so ? ' No man to hender her from sayin' what she did say, and should say, that I Q MISS RICHARDS' BOY. \v;i> welcome, and more'n welcome, to a home with her, as long as I would make her as happy as a queen on her throne by acceptin' of it. And as for work, if it would make me any happier, though I'd no need t.> wet my fingers in dish-water if I didn't want to, there was the deestrict school. The teacher had jest died off, and they was in a peck of troubles who to get to fill her place. The trustee, Mr. Capelin, had been to her time and agin, askin' her about it, and she had told him plain right out and out, that she didn't keep school-moms by her, and couldn't furnish them on order, thinkin' he had trailed there enough, and he a widower, and it might make talk. Though, as for any encouragement she had gin him, folks knew too well her feelins on the subject to think that she would encourage him to come there only on business, and she a not wantin' to misuse him right out and out, on his wife's account, who was a Christian, if there ever was one, and he good to her in her last sickness, she would say it of him, though men was not to be depended on, and she despised the hull set on 'em. " The school-mom got five dollars a week, and boarded round. But there would be no boardin' round for me, not if she knowed herself. The school-house was only a little ways from her house, and her house was my home as long as I would consent to stay with her, and it was nobody's business only jest hern. There was no man, thank heaven, a snoopin' round to say to her, i Why do ye so?' The school was small, and I would have no trouble with none of 'em, unless it was Miss Richards'es boy, and a better dispositioned boy, and a better hearted boy never lived than he was; that she would contend for. let anybody run him down that was a mind to. And he probably wouldn't go to tlie deestrict school much more, bein' promised to be sent through college by them that was able to do so." And the letter ended as it begun, with warm and lengthy expres- sions of affectionate interest in my welfare, and welcome to her home. One week from the day I received her letter, I was on my way to IfISS RICHARDS' EOT. 21 Cold Creek Station, where I left the cars at about eleven in the morning, and the train whizzing away, left me on the platform alone. How quiet everything looked ! It seemed as if the world had stopped to rest. Far off, in the green fields, I could see men at work, and the road stretched away like a dusty white ribbon, and lost itself in the green woodland. The station-master stood by the gate, talking with a good-looking, middle-aged man, who had stopped his wagon there. I ventured to ask the official the way to Miss Cobb's, and the distance. He said it was " only two miles, right ahead." I thought I could walk that distance quite easily, and set out. All the while I was speaking to the station-master, the good-look- ing, gray-whiskered man in the wagon eyed me closely, with a pair of keen, good-humored eyes. But I had hardly got out into the road, and started on my walk, than he overtook me. He stopped the wagon. HE STOPPED THE WAGON. MISS RICHARDS' SOY, " Are you the little gal Miss Cobb has been expectin' of ? " "Yes, sir." " So I thought. Now, I am goin' a mile and over, right on your way, and I will take you along as fur as I go, an' welcome, if you say MS much." I accepted his invitation thankfully, and he reached down his strong brown hand, and helped me up to the seat beside him. " Goin' to teach the deestrict school, so Miss Cobb told me," said my new companion, after I was comfortably seated. " Yes, sir, if I am fortunate enough to please the trustee." "He'd be a darnation fool if he wasn't pleased with you. A consummit fool, I say, which he haint in the aforesaid matter jest mentioned, for he likes your looks first-rate liked you the minute he set his eyes on you. Pretty as a snow-drop, he thought you was. ought to say, I am the present honor of with you, Jeremiah vice, mom." pressed my pleasure thanked him for his " Your name is from a female in herself." ilton." Well, Miss Hamilton, Which, perhaps I the trustee, who has set tin' in the buggy Capelin, at your ser- Of course I ex- at meeting him, and kind opinion. Hamilton, I heard fact, from Miss Cobb "Yes. EvaHam- "Yes, jest so. I hope you'll make yourself to hum amongst us. Goin' to have a good place to stay to. A smart, likely, forehanded woman Miss Cobb is." "Yes, and one of the kindest, truest hearts in the world," said I, warmly. "Fact," said he. "True as the book of Paul. Has her ways, though." JEREMIAH CAPELIN. RICHARDS' BOY. 23 I told him " most people had." For I could not endure even an insinuated blame against " Auntie," as I always used to call her. " True agin ; true as John, or any other 'postle you'll bring up. If a board don't tip up one end, it will tother. Everybody has their ways ; some different; no two like the other one. Wimmin are curious for 'em ; curious set wimmin be, as I ever seen. Some hate the men like all posess, some like 'em too well, some will run at 'em, some away from 'em, some will run one way, some another, jest as their way is. She seems to be sot aginst 'em, kinder shyin' off all the time, dretful oflish and balky with 'em ; her way, curious. I persume men wouldn't hurt her for a dollar. I wouldn't, not for a silver dollar," he added, reflectively. He stopped a minute, and leaned over the dash-board, and dis- lodged a fly from the horse's back with his whip, and adjured him at the same time to " get up, and not go to sleep." I made some remark about the country through which we were passing. He responded pleasantly. But then, after a brief silence, he began again on the subject which seemed to him of most interest. " No ; not for a silver dollar, I wouldn't hurt her. My late wife sot a good deal by Miss Cobb. I lost my companion four years ago this comin' fall," said he, in a confidential tone. " Lost her with the tyfus. Information set in ; no savin' of her. Miss Cobb watched over her like a sister ; tried her best to pull her through ; couldn't do it, though. Good woman, never blamed her a mite ; 'twan't her doin's ; 'twas the tyfus. Had to give her up. It came tough on me, but I couldn't help myself. That is four years ago, and I haint never seen but one woman sense that I would love to see set across the table from me, in Miss Capelin's chair. Not much chance of seein' of her there, as I can see at the present time/ Get up, Jim ! Are you goin' to sleep, or are you not ? " Jim, thus adjured, manifested his wakefulness by going a little ., 4 MISS RICHARDS' EOT. faster; and very soon my companion, pointing to a pretty white cottage before us, said : " There is my place, Miss Hamilton." I told him "I thought it was a very pretty, cozy place." " Yes. House as good as new, and a good farm I have got here, as there is in the country seventy-four acres, all paid for, and not a chick nor a child in the world. Curious, haint it ? and the world full of wimmen and children." We had now got in front of the white cottage, and I expected Mr. Capelin would stop ; but as I saw we were passing by, I said : " I will get out here, sir, if this is where you stop." " No ; set still. The horse seems determined to go on. Let him go. I generally let him have his way ; he is a well-meanin' horse." I told him I had just as soon walk the rest of the way. "No; set still. Jim seems determined to go on. Let him have his way." He carried the idea that it was nothing to him at all, but only a piece of dogged obstinacy and self-will on the part of the horse. The country was lovely through which we were passing. On one side of the road were pleasant woods. So grand and stately looked all the trees, and in such extremely good order, that I could not help speaking admiringly of them. " Yes," returned Mr. Capelin. " Creveland Park is as handsome a stretch of woods as you'll find in these parts. These woods, clean and handsome as a picter, runs clear up to Creveland Hall, two good miles from here, or a mile and a half, plumb. Can't see it from here," said he, stretching up his neck in a vain endeavor to peer over the lofty tree-tops. "Handsome old house, too, as there is in the coun- try. Get up, Jim ; or, if you want to go to sleep, lay down to it." Jim tried to assure his master that he did not want to go to sleep, by taking a little faster gait, as I asked him, with interest : MISS RICHARDS' BOY. 25 " Is the family living at the Hall ? " " Wall, no, not exactly. The housekeeper and one or two of the servants stay there all the time. The present owner, Hugh Creve- land, is a bachelder a wildish sort of a chap ; used to be awful for carryin's on, drinkin', and cuttin' up jinerally. Kinder coolin' down, they say. Time, too, I should think ; must be in the neighborhood of forty. Can't be more than five years younger than I be, and I am in the neighborhood of forty-five. I haint said I was forty-five, but in the neighborhood of it." But the exact age of the worthy Mr. Capelin did not interest me so much as the subject we had been discussing. I had read a great many novels, and the romantic heroes who had been most fascinating to me always were very mature of age, with mysteries in their past lives. They lived in old baronial halls. They had all been very wild in their youth, and the love of some young woman, some friendless orphan, usually, had won them from their evil ways, and saved them. I was only seventeen, and had read a great many novels. " Is this Mr. Creveland handsome ? " "Yes; handsome as a picter; or that is, he used to be. I haint seen him for yeaA. How his big, black eyes used to flash and snap in his head. Curly black hair, head right up, afraid o' nobody, wimmen specially. Never was afraid of wimmen a mite. Curious he haint never married. Some day he is goin' to adopt Mrs. Richards' boy. She is the housekeeper. Does a sight for him, any way. Sends him to school all the time ; goin' to send him to college, I have heern. Curious to think he haint never got married, haint it? though there is time enough now. Probably the right one haint come along yet. There is time enough for him to be married. Folks older than he is get married, if the right one comes along, and they can coax her up I'll be hanged if she haint right there ahead of us ! If there haint Miss Cobb, as sure as Christopher Columbus ! " 26 MISS RICHARDS BOY. On the side of the road opposite the park there was a little grove, ami amongst the scattered trees were tall berry-bushes ; Auntie had evidently been picking berries, for there was a bright little tin pail hanging on her arm. She had come out into the highway just in advance of us, and drawing her roomy gingham sun-bonnet over IHM- face like a shelter-tent, she was walking demurely on in its shade, looking neither to the right nor the left, when my driver called out : " Hello, Miss Cobb, see what I have brought you." She looked round rather impatiently, I thought, but the minute she caught sight of me, she darted to the wagon, threw both her arms round me, and kissed me loudly, the sun-bonnet falling back on her shoulders, and standing up like a tall picket of gingham. "S'posen you pass that round, Miss Cobb. Mebby 'twould be agreeable to the rest of the present company," said Mr. Capelin, good- humored ly. Auntie deighed not to reply to him, but pulled her sun-bonnet once more about her face, and telling me that she would get to the house about as quick as I did, she walked rapidly on. But Mr. Cape- lin kept along by her side. " Come, get in, Miss Cobb ; don't be a walkin' along by the side of the wagon. It looks too much in the dog line. Get in. Make yourself to hum." And to my great surprise Auntie did get in, making me sit between them, however, and keeping the whole box sides of her sun-bonnet straight toward the horse. And not one word did she say to Mr. Capelin, only to reply to his good-humored questions as shortly and tersely as possible. Three times during our drive he hunched me with his elbow, .and requested me in a whisper to observe "how she was a shyin' off." And when, at Auntie's door, he got out to help her out, and she refused to touch his hand, and almost fell in consequence, he whispered to me again, as he lifted me out: MISS RICHARDS' BOY. 27 " Curious, haint it, how balky she is ? " But as he turned round to go home, he said, with extreme good-humor, " he hoped I would have a first-rate good time amongst 'em ; couldn't fail of it, he knew, with such a woman as Miss Cobb to live with ; wished he never should have anything worse happen to him than that would be." Drove off, and then, after going a few steps, held up the "well-meaning" Jim, and turning round on his seat, he asked me "if I wasn't expectin' any band-boxes and things. Because, if I was, Jim had jest as leves bring 'em down as not." I told him I did expect some boxes and my piano, which I had been permitted to keep. He asked me " when they would be along." I told him, and assuring me again that " Jim wouldn't fail to see to it, and bring 'em down," he drove off. As he did so, I said with some enthusiasm : " Isn't he a very good man, Auntie ? " "Good enough for a man," she replied tartly. "But there haint no more dependence on 'em, as a race, than there is in my clock, and that struck sixty this mornin' at nine o'clock, for I counted it with my own ears. No," phasis, as we walked bordered path from clean, yellow door- no opinion of men as A woman, a few Auntie, stood in the these last words of peated like an echo : ion of 'em." girl, Jane Tomkins," toward the door. And JANE TOMKINS. she repeated with em- up the little flower- the front gate to the steps. "No, I haint a race." years younger than open door-way, and at her mistress, she re- " I haint no 'p m - "That is my hired said Auntie, looking pointing the sun-bon- net suddenly toward my ear, she whispered, "And she haint got two idees in her head above dish-water." JflSS RICHARDS' BOY. And in this way I was introduced to Auntie's cottage and its inmates. It was a pleasant, old-fashioned farm-house, large enough to hold comfort, but not display. In a short time Auntie and Jane had hurried round and cooked a dinner, which would have delighted the lu'arts of ten hungry men. After dinner was over, and the dishes washed and put away, Auntie took a small pail of milk in her hand, and asked me if I didn't want to put on my hat, and go out and see her fci corset. " I told her I would go, wondering somewhat at her evident idea that a corset was a strange sight to me, and also at her keeping it out of doors. I thought, however, she might have been washing it, and wished to show me her signal triumph over soiled cloth and whalebone. But she led the way, under cherry and plum trees, back MISS RICHAEDS 1 BOT. 29 to a low pair of bars, and leaning over them, she commenced calling gently, " Coday ! coday ! coday ! " And in a few minutes a large white lamb came running along, trampling down the daisies and butter-cups in his desire to get to his mistress. But as he stopped in front of us, I couldn't help laughing out heartily, for over the white, innocent face was a paper cap, tied with a broad ruffle of the paper, like an old woman's night-cap. The effect, as the lamb lifted his eyes expect- ingly to ours, was indescribably funny to me, but Auntie did look upon it in that way, she was deeply indignant. And she tore it off, tear- ing it to pieces as she did so. " Miss Richards' boy agin ! " she exclaimed, indignantly. " If he meddles with my corset agin, I'll know the reason why. Dretful cun- ning he thinks it is. It takes a sight of sense to make night-caps for my corset. This makes three times within a month that my corset has come home with a night-cap on. He has got to stop it, or I'll put the papers onto him. Jest as sure as I live and breathe I'll put the papers on him if he don't stop his goin's on." What " putting the papers on him " meant, I did not know at that time ; something dreadful, I knew by her tone. Later, I learned that she meant sueing him, the "papers" being a summons. Her feelings, which were outraged by this indignity, did not subside again into perfect calmness, until we wandered back into the kitchen-garden. Here the prosperous looks of her plants and vegetables seemed to restore her tranquillity, and she asked me, in a tone of proud assur- ance, "if I had seen another such a garden this year?" I told her truly that I had not. for everything did look extremely nice and flourishing. And she went on to say, " that a good garding she would have, for it was half of a body's living." But while she was talking thus composedly to me, her feelings were doomed to another shock, for chancing to stroll near the pickets that separated her " garding " from the highway, I heard her exclaim, suddenly : gQ MISS RICHARDS' BOY. '< Til put the papers onto him, jest as sure as I live." " Who, Auntie ? " I asked. " Miss Richards' boy!" she cried. " Look there," said she, point- ing toward the fence. And there, surmounting one of the pickets, like the bust of a hero, was a baby pumpkin carved into a grotesque likeness of Miss Cobb, her Roman nose, her spectacles, her broad cap border. There was real genius in it. And with all my dignity, (I was very dignified and old at that time,) I could scarcely keep from laughing. But Auntie was deeply indignant. " That is jest the way that boy torments the life out of me, and as good as I have been to him; warnin' him, every chance I get, to leave his wild ways, and flee from the wrath to come ; and tellin' him, time and agin, that if he didn't turn and stop behavin', he would wreathe in future torment ; exhorted him, told him jest what a lost worm of the dust he is. Was tellin' him so yesterday. Always took jest sucli an interest in him. And now see the pay I get for it. I'll put the papers onto him, if it goes on so much longer." Jane, the hired girl, had come out into the garden to pick some berries for supper, and she remarked, like an echo crystalized in flesh and blood : "I would put the papers onto him, if I was in your place. He is a bad, good-for-nothing boy ? " " He haint no such thing. A better hearted boy never lived. You had better keep still, and tend to your berries." I was much surprised at the sudden change in Auntie's words. I was not so wise then in the affection that claims the exclusive right of scolding its object. " Does lie live far from here, Auntie ? " I asked, not that I cared to know on his account, I was not thinking of " Miss Richards' boy," but upon the strange and mysterious hero, Hugh Creveland. She turned and pointed toward the south. MISS RICHARD'S BOY. 31 " Do you see that big stone house, with the Gabriels on the ruff?" " The what, Auntie ? " " The house with the Gabriel ends." I followed the direction of her long, slim forefinger, and saw the tall, pointed gables rising above the dark oak trees. " It looks as if it were a splen- did old house." "It is. The house with the gabriel ends can't be beat, nor anywhere come up to it in this country." " Could I go and look at it some day, Auntie ? Would the house- keeper allow me ? Is she a good woman ? " " She has her properties." " Maybe Mr. Creveland wouldn't care to have people going over his house, in his absence. Is he a nice man, Auntie ? " " He has his properties." I saw that Auntie was not de- sirous of prolonging the conversa- tion, and so I outwardly restrained my curiosity, and followed her into the house. But my mind was no more engrossed by the ideal heroes 32 MISS RICHARDS' SOY. of the romances I had read and wept over. It was filled with the image of Hugh Creveland. Fully a dozen times during the fortnight before I commenced my school did Auntie come in from her " garding," or pasture, rampant to " put the papers onto Miss Bichards'es boy." But did the much-suffer- ing Jane venture to echo her revilings ever so feebly, she would only turn the torrent of her indignation toward her ; and once she told Jane, in an injured, rebuking tone, " that she should be glad if she had his properties." In fact, I could not discern any evil in any of the deeds that vexed Auntie so. Only the very spirit of fun and mischief seemed inspiring him. Once, I know, the " corset " came home at night his pasture led back through a shady lane to the entrance of the park and he came home with his long locks parted on the top of his head, braided, and done up with a hair-pin, and wire spectacles fastened over his wise, innocent eyes. Never did I see Auntie so fully determined as she was upon this occasion "to put the papers onto him" ; for nothing touched her more nearly than any disrespect to " the corset." Later, when I knew the utter dreariness of the life he led at home, his seclusion from the world, his mother's gloom and melancholy, and his total lack of all society and recreation, I could better understand how the naturally gay spirits and irrepressible life of " Miss Richards'es boy" found vent in such whimsical channels. But at that time I could not understand how any one as old as I was, and I was very old, could possibly be so childish and undignified. I was very dignified. It was a dreamy habit of mine to form pictures in my own mind of people of whom I had heard much and had not seen ; and I decided that Claude Richards was stout, a good deal shorter than I, although he was just six months older, Auntie said; thick-set, with very red cheeks and black eyes, and large, red hands, that he could find no fitting place for. In fact, I decided that Miss Richards'es boy was rather vulgar looking. MISS RICHARDS' BOY. 33 But time rolled on, and brought the day that I was to commence my school. And I wended my way toward the school-house, with my new silver bell in my hand, emblem of my sovereign dignity; although many days have passed by since then, I have never, even distantly, approached the venerable age I then enjoyed. I had not worn long dresses a very great while, but I put on my longest one that morning, a blue muslin, that trailed slightly, and I wound my abundant hair in a great shining coil at the back of my head. It wanted to curl. In fact, it would assert itself and have its own way, in little waves and rings, whenever it could elude my close vigilance. But I did my best to restrain it in matronly shape. Mr. Capelin, the trustee, came down to Auntie's in the morning, as she stood by the gate seeing me off, and he offered to go down to the school-house with me. In fact, that worthy man made many errands in our direction. But I told him " it wasn't necessary. I was not at all afraid of having any trouble." "Let me see anybody making you any trouble," said he, in a defiant tone. " Why, I should jest as soon think of abusing a moss rose-bud as you. You are just as sweet and pretty as one, this minute." And he patted my head as I passed out of the gate. I know I felt that his pat- ting my head and comparing me to a bud, instead of a full-blown flower, was compromising to my dignity. But I said nothing, and after I left them, I looked back and saw that he was talking to Auntie quite ear- nestly and pleasantly ; and she, with her whaleboned sun-bonnet drawn defiantly over her eyes, was, to all outward appearance, paying him not the slightest attention ; and I know I thought that Mr. Capelin was probably, in his own mind, bewailing her uncontrollable tendency to be " balky, and shy off." There was quite a little knot of pupils collected around the school- house door, small, white-headed boys and demure little girls, with pre- ternaturally clean faces and stiffly-starched pink calico aprons. I MISS RICHARDS' SOY. ^ greeted them with benignancy and dignified affection. It was not quite school-time, and I was standing in the open door, looking across the road at the thick foliage of the oak trees, for Creveland Park ran along the opposite side of the road, when a little gate opened in the high wall opposite me, and a young gentleman came through. I said young gentleman, although he was a lad of probably about seventeen ; but he looked so aris- tocratic, so noble, that I said at once to myself, "It must be either a relative of the Creve- lands or some grand acquaint- ance of the family visiting there." He had such an easy, graceful walk, there was such a proud, careless grace in the pose of the handsome head, that, as he seem- ed coming toward me, my dig- nity almost fled before it. As I said, his destination seemed to be the school-house, and I ex- pected to hear him ask me the distance to the next village, or perhaps complain of some mis- demeanor of my pupils in the CLAUDE RICHARDS. ,, . ,., ., ,. park, or something like it, when the children behind me, having caught sight of him, commenced shouting, rapturously, "Claude! Claude! Claude Richards!" And MISS RICHARDS' EOT. 35 I, in my mute surprise, looking up into the handsomest face I had ever seen, met, for the first time, the true, honest eyes of " Miss Rich- urds'es boy," the very handsomest face I had ever seen; that I decided in my own mind at the first glance. And my next wonder was, where did he get his elegant, aristocratic looks and ways, his air of perfect repose, and easy manners ? His eyes were blue, clear, and steadfast ; blue eyes, that met your own frankly and fearlessly. They were shaded with long lashes, that, at times, gave rather a dreamy look to them ; and at times they would laugh, and sparkle, and run over with merri- ment. They were the most wonderfully changeful and expressive eyes that I ever saw ; but whatever expression they might assume to- others, they were never otherwise than kind to me. I had no trouble with my school. My pupils were all good ; and above all others in goodness and kindness to me was Miss Richards'es boy, although, for the first few weeks, he occasionally gave vent to his inexpressible spirits in mischievous pranks, which I would always cor- rect and rebuke in a gentle, but grave and dignified, manner. For, although "Miss Richards'es boy" was a half-year older than I, and although I suspected at the time that his education was far superior to mine, still I felt, in my dignified position as teacher and the founder of my own fortunes, as if I might be his grandmother. And so, at consid- erable personal inconvenience at times, for I had an eye for fun myself, I had always maintained a lady-like composure and calm demeanor. But one day it was the fourth week of my school, I think, I lost my composure and serene demeanor, and it was the fault of " Miss Richards'es boy." All that day I had had a torturing headache. I had felt so ill in the morning, that Auntie said, " instead of going to school, 1 had better go and lay down, and let her pull the curtings down, and I was as white as her corset." And Mr. Capelin, who had sauntered down to see if he could borrow a plow, although he knew he could just as well have obtained a cannon or an iron-clad war-ship of Auntie as a 36 MISS RICHARDS' BOY. plow. He also joined his entreaties that I would " stay at home, and let Miss Cobb doctor me up. He wished he could have the chance ; he would give a silver dollar for it," he said, looking at Auntie, with good- nature beaming from his eyes. Auntie, of course, paid no sort of attention to his words ; but 1 thanked him for his kind advice, and I told him I thought I could teacli well enough. I thought my headache would wear off. But it did not. "I HAVE BEEN A WRETCH." It grew worse and worse, although my paleness vanished, I knew, for my cheeks burned like fire. I dare say I looked healthier than ever, and he had no idea of my feeling so ill. But it was about the middle of the afternoon, when every word I spoke seemed to rend my head, and every noise and move of the children was torture to me, that Claude came to me with an exercise he wished me to correct. And there, instead of the mathematical puzzle, was a picture of a school- MISS RICHARDS' BOY. 3f ma'am, with an unnaturally long whip in her hand, driving her brood of scholars up the mount of knowledge. As I looked at it I laughed wildly ; and then, laying my head down on the desk, I burst into tears. But as I laid there, sobbing like a baby, that I was, I felt a hand upon my head, a gentle hand, and it was a gentle voice that said : " I have been a wretch, to annoy you so ; but I'll never do it again. Try me, and see if I will." But as I still sobbed on, he added, remorsefully : " Or you may turn me out of school, if you had rather. Just say the word, and I'll go this minute. But I'll be good if you'll let me stay. See if I am not." Of course, I told him to stay, and that I was ill and nervous, or I should not have noticed such a trifle. And I know how true a compassion and remorse looked out of his blue eyes at my words. And I recollect, he went down to a spring a quarter of a mile away to get some water of extra coldness to bathe my head ; and then he insisted on hearing all my classes for me. And I remember I went home that night with the conviction that I had never seen any one manlier and kinder than " Miss Richards'es boy." And as the days rolled by that impression deepened and intensi- fied. His wild pranks, his irrepressible outbursts of fun grew less fre- quent. He applied himself diligently to his books; and, surely, no teacher could have a kinder, gentler pupil than he. And, in spite of my advanced age and my mild, dignified airs of superiority, he seemed to have a sort of protecting instinct, and tried in every way to guard me from annoyance and save me from anxiety. There was one white- headed little chap who caused me great trouble. I was very ambi- tious to teach my smaller pupils a great deal, and I daily drilled them in Bible and historical questions. And this little fellow, I know, never failed of affirming that he was made by " George Washington." 38 MIS8 RICHARDS' BOY. 1 think, after a while, he said it through obstinacy ; for I drilled him so thoroughly that he must have known that he had a diviner, origin. But this child seemed to have a chronic and perennial desire to put an end to the life that he insisted had its origin in " George Washington." And he seemed determined to kill himself while at school. And as he was an only child, and his mother a pitiful-looking little widow, I felt as if a great responsibility had indeed fallen on me. At noon and recess, if 1 were not continually on the lookout, he would either fall in the creek, and be nearly drowned, or drop down from tree-tops, and be brought in bruised and bloody. He was my youngest pupil, and I loved him very much ; and it seemed as if my hair must turn as white as his own through watchfulness and anxiety. I told Claude one day how I felt about it ; for, being my oldest pupil, and so very, very good to me, 1 had fallen into the habit of going to him with all my small perplexities and cares ; and Claude told me to " not give myself any uneasiness on account of the young ' Father of his Country ' " for so they irrever- ently called him " for he would take him under his wing." And he was as good as his word. He did. He either kept him with him, or he found means to amuse him in some safe manner ; and so that great load was taken off my shoulders. And then there was another boy, not large in body, but with immense powers of making himself disa- greeable. Against this boy's annoyances Claude was my rock of defence. Indeed, he was so kind to me, so thoughtful, so solicitous for my welfare, so intelligent and delightful a companion, and in every way so straightforward, and manly, and honest, that I used often to wonder what I should do if it were not for " Miss Richards'es boy." My society seemed to give him also great contentment. He came to me with all his joys and with all his troubles. One day he said to me, what he said he had never spoken of before to any one, how gloomy his home was. I had been lecturing him about some of his pranks, and he laughed heartily when I told him of Auntie's consternation about her " corset." I did not tell him, however, how narrowly he had MISS RICHARDS' EOT. 39 escaped having " the papers put onto him." He laughed, his hearty, ringing laugh, as I said, and then there was a wistful, weary look crept into his blue eyes, as he said : " I oughtn't to say it, even to you, but I just wish you knew what life \vas at our house. My mother loves me, and is good ; but she never speaks, if she can help it. She will not have any society herself, or allow me to have. She is so still, so melancholy ! Do you know, I never heard her laugh in my whole life. Home is like a grave, only the corpse is a living one." I pitied him, and I told him so ; and I know my sympathy seemed to cheer him up wonderfully, though it was not his way to be sad long. And I thought, in the future, when I should have wedded my noble and mysterious hero, and was living in grandeur unexcelled, that then it would be one of my greatest delights to make a happy home, in which to welcome my boy. In all this time, although I had dreamed of it by night and by day, I had never seen Creveland Hall, the home of the hero of my imagina- tion, Hugh Creveland. , Auntie had told me " she would go with me some day, and let me see the pictures, bein' as I was such a case for 'em." But she had put it off from day to day. Probably Mr. Capelin would have called her " balky." But at last, it was just after my summer school had closed, she told me, one morning, that " if it was agreeable to me, we would walk over to the house with the gabriel ends," as Auntie never failed, with inexorable determination, to call it. She said she had business with the gardener. We set out accordingly. It was about a mile, and by a beautiful road, winding through to the park. Grand as I had imagined Creveland Hall to be, it transcended all my expectations. I had never seen anything of the kind before. Its imposing size quite overpowered me. Had not Auntie assured me so many times that " Miss Richards had her properties," 1 should have been afraid of her, such a white, 40 MISS RICHARDS' BOY. still ghost of a woman ! There was not a look of her son in her face. But up in the long picture-gallery was a portrait, that, although dark and haughty in its beauty, had an indescribable likeness, in the proud poise of the head, the droop of the long eyelashes, to " Miss Richards'es AT THE HALL. boy." I mentioned this, to Mrs. Richards, who accom- panied me, and chanced to glance up at her, as I spoke. I was astonished to see the change in her face. She did not look confused at all. But in her eyes, as she gazed steadfastly on the handsome, haughty face, I read wounded love, hatred, contempt, and, above all, a powerlessness such as I have sometimes seen in hunted animals. Instinctively, I turned away, and looked at another picture, a tall lady, clad in a velvet habit, with a fal- con on her wrist. But the gentle, low voice of Mrs. Richards recalled my attention. " That gentleman ? That," she said, calmly, " is the present owner MISS RICHARDS' DOT. 41 of the estate, Hugh Creveland ; and that tall lady was his grandmother. She was the daughter of an English lord." Not a trace of emotion could I see in her face now. It was utterly impassive. I decided that my former impression must have been fancy. But, to tell the truth, I did not give Mrs. Richards much thought, for my mind was too much engrossed with the dark, handsome face I had seen at last, the mysterious hero of all my romantic dreams, the prince of all my castles in the west, Hugh Creveland. And from this time, more than ever, he was my imaginary hero. I thought of all the mysteries in his past life. I thought of him, a wan- derer for so many years, with no gentle voice to welcome him home after his long and perilous sojourning, no tender eyes to weep over his absence and grow bright at his return. No wonder he was a rover, an exile. But some gentle hand would save him; some love would shield him from all temptation. And then, to be mistress of Creveland Hall. Why that, in itself, was enough to make any woman's bliss. The days, the months passed on. Two years elapsed. But so gently did they go that it seemed as if Time had wreathed his hour- glass with poppies and mandragora and fallen asleep. The " corset " and the " gardiiig " were prosperous. Mr. Capelin still haunted the house on every possible occasion and on the strangest errands. To his discouragement, Auntie still " shyed off, and was balky." It was a secluded life that I led, but I was not at all lonely. I was content and happy ; and that I was so I think was greatly owing to " Miss Richards'es boy." Thrown together constantly as we were, real- izing, on closer acquaintance, how good and noble he was, he came to seem in a way to belong to me. With true maternal interest, I would give him long lectures upon life and its duties. I wished him to be so noble and successful. I beseeched him to make his future as grand as my hopes were for him. I told him, as his teacher, I should feel ili.it he honored me by every exalted deed of his. 42 MISS BICHABDS' BOY. Claude took my lectures in good part. In fact, he seemed to like to be with me, whatever I might say to him. He did not come to my school longer than for the first term ; but I saw him every day. He studied at home, and recited to the clergyman at Cold Creek, and was making good progress, I understood. Mr. Creveland had written about his going to college ; but his mother disliked having him leave home as long as he could learn of the good rector. I was nearly nineteen, and Claude six months older, when it began to dawn on me that " my boy " loved his teacher, not as the dignified instructor I had tried to be, not in the filial way I had always encour- aged him to regard me, but as a woman to be won and wed. And I remember just how the knowledge impressed me when I first became aware of it. I remember just the answer prepared for him, when he should come to use plain words of love. It was to be a refusal, of course ; but it was to be benignant, thoughtful, kind, yet firm, firm as fate. It was to commence, " My dear boy," in a motherly, affectionate tone ; and it was to contain a good deal of moral instruction and exhortation. It was to be long, and was to have the effect of melting him to tears. And I was to retain a gentle composure and calmness and a demeanor combining the maternal with the dignified instructor. But how different it was, to be sure, from what I had dreamed. It was the evening after he received a letter from Mr. Creveland, saying that the arrangements were all made, and Claude was to go to college, and his outfit was to be obtained in the college town, my own old home, arid he was to be there on such a day of the month. A friend of Mr. Creveland, a lawyer, with whom he had become acquainted while abroad (and, strange to say, it was the very relative of my guardian whom I had considered stony-hearted), was to meet him, and would attend to all necessary business. Claude was to start within a week. It was a lovely afternoon, and I had wandered down to a favorite MISS RICHARDS' BOY. 43 resort of ours on the bank of the lake, at the southern extremity of the park. And Claude followed me there, and in the sweet sunset told me he was going away. " Going?" said I, with a great pang at my heart. Who would be left to take my hoy's place? Who was ever so kind, so good to me? And so the tears were in my eyes, instead of his, when he told me <; how dear 1 was to him, how I seemed so near and precious, like a part of his o\vu life." I know his words gave me great content and rest ; and as we stood there, side by side, it seemed as if the great world withdrew from us, with nil its inhabitants, even my mysterious hero, and Claude and I were as much alone, and yet as blessed, as Adam and Eve in Eden. But I made a great effort to recover my dignity. I tried to remem- ber some of the lectures I had prepared for the occasion. It was quite a failure as a lecture, I think ; but it served a purpose. For the first time in my life I saw Claude angry. He accused me of heartlessness, and said "I did not care for him, was cold, indifferent." His vehement passion for a moment restored my self-assurance. I said : " I do not care for you, my dear boy ? No one can ever have a warmer interest in your welfare, not even your mother." " If you want to drive me distracted, talk to me a little more about motherly interest, and such rubbish. I am older than you, and you know it." "Time cannot be rightly reckoned by years alone. There* is an experience that makes people old while they are yet young. Age does not always depend upon days and months. I am much, very much older than you, my dear boy. And it is my duty to tell you that you will forget all this in the future, and will bestow your love more worthily and happily upon some young girl, some blue-eyed fairy. (My eyes were brown.) You -will get over this boyish fancy." 44 MISS RICHARDS' BOY. Perhaps I expected that he would interrupt me with tearful plead- ings and entreaties ; but, if so, I was mistaken. He was silent for a moment. When I glanced up at him (he was a great deal taller than 1), I saw upon his face a look I had never seen there before. It was not that of a boy, not that of a poor widow's son. It was as if whole generations of proud ancestors looked out of his steadfast eyes. " Time will prove whether this is a boyish fancy," he said. And before I could say a word, he was gone. And I, overcome with a sudden sense of loss^ and loneliness, buried my face in my hands strange inconsistency and wept. The next day, and every day while he remained at home, Claude came to see me, as usual, THE REFUSAL. but not in the role I had marked out for him ; pale, anguish-stricken, with despairing eyes, vexing me with entreaties. No, nothing of the MISS RICHARDS' BOY. 45 kind. Not by a word, or a glance, did he show that I was any more to him than the friend that lie valued and respected. And by some mystic process, beyond my reasoning or will, he grew older, and 1 younger every day. Younger, and weaker, and far less wise, although no word or look of his ever, helped to give me the impression. On his return from college, during his first vacations, the same subtle mystery remained, and increased. My boy was getting to be very, very much older and stronger than I. No brother could be tenderer and kinder to an only sister, but he never spoke again of love. Still, in spite of his silence, I felt in my heart, I read it sometimes in his blue, honest eyes, that time was, indeed, proving the strength of what I had called his boyish fancy. I had now reached my twentieth birthday. It was a still, lovely June twilight. I stood by the low, brown gate, in front of Auntie's, looking at the beauty of the western sky, when I heard the slow, steady tramp of a horse, coming down the road. The rider was a stranger to me, I thought, at the first glance ; but as he came nearer, I knew him at once. He saw me, and raised his hat with easy grace. But at that very moment, the " corset " sprang out across the road, the gray horse shied and reared, and Hugh Creveland, flung head- long, lay insensible at my feet. A couple of men, one of them the gray-headed old gardener at the Hall, chanced to Jbe coming down the road, and as they saw the fall, they ran up, and carried him into the house, and laid him on the lounge, in the sitting-room. He was injured considerably, and an arm was broken, besides a severe bruise on the temple. But the doctor who cared for him was skillful, and Auntie was a good nurse, and he "got along famously," so he said. It seems like a dream to me, his stay in our cottage, or a page from the romances I used to delight in ; and like a dream within a dream, is one shadowy memory. 40 MISS RICHARDS' BOY. It was the night after his accident, when the news, of course, had gone out, magnified, as in all small places, (hat he was fatally injured. The doctor had given an opiate to ease his pain, and gone home. Auntie had lain down upon the lounge, in the next room. I was left to watch, and sat, half-asleep, and half-awake, in the large arm-chair, drawn up beside the window. The lamp was THE DREAM. turned down to a faint spark upon the table. The moon hung low in the west, like a large silver globe. The night-winds stirred the tendrils and clusters of the creeping rose at the window, and the moonlight threw their shadowy reflections on the carpet. How they waved, and flickered, and chased each other. And was it a dream, MISS RICHARDS' EOT. 47 or did a still figure glide across these shadows a woman's form and pause by the couch of the sick man, wringing its hands ? And did I hear a voice, or did I imagine it ? " Is it, then, a last farewell ? Is your bad life to be ended here ? Or will you live to break other women's hearts, as you have mine ? " The voice, or the wind, whatever it was, ceased ; the still, white figure, or the shadow of the moonlight, glided away, and was lost; and the shadows mingled and intertwined strangely and grotesquely. The next thing I remember, the morning sun was shining in the room, and Auntie stood by the table, mixing a draught for her patient. "Where is the woman, Auntie ?" were my first words. "What woman?" " The woman who came here last night. She looked like Mrs. Richards." " There has been no one here. You have been dreaming, child.'* " I saw her, I am sure of it." " It is impossible, for I was awake every minute of the night." Now, as Auntie was one of the kind who consider it a personal affront to be accused of going to sleep, except in their lawful beds, I said no more. But the dream remained with me. And like a dream was my life for the next few weeks. Mr. Creveland got better, and after a few days was able to sit in a great easy-chair. The doctor, indeed, hinted of some internal injury, that demanded perfect rest, and care, lest it might terminate danger- ously. But Mr. Creveland was so imperious, so used to having his own way, that he paid little heed to these admonitions. Meanwhile he was gentleness itself to me, and fascinating beyond words, when he chose. He staid with us six weeks. A new world he brought to me, new thoughts, new subjects of interest. Not a happier world, for it was too restless, too disturbed, too uncertain and strange, for simple content and happiness. 48 MISS RICHARDS' BOY. I had never thought much of my books, in my hitherto calm life. My little mirror, in my room, told me that I had a fair face, a face with big, wondering, brown eyes, and a wistful, appealing look. But I had never given these things much thought, or regarded them as a means of power. Now, however, as I met the bold, handsome, admiring eyes of Hugh Creveland, there was something in them that brought back my guardian's words to me, "Your face, my little Eva, will make your fortune." I was very artless, very innocent, I believe ; but I had not been in Hugh Cleveland's presence a week, before I knew he loved me. He did not say so, in direct words ; but I read it in every glance of his eyes, every tone of his voice ; and above all, by that strange intu- ition that lets women read hearts so well. And as the days passed by, I saw that he was fighting against that love, with all his might. I thought it was his pride, that stood in the way of his fancy. He acted so strangely at times ! His man- ner would change so suddenly, from cheerfulness to gloom and despondency. He liked to hear me play and sing, and he would read aloud for hours, sending to the Hall for piles of books from the great library. He would read sounding old ballads, recounting noble deeds, and exquisite love poems, making them seem real, by their rapt, soul- ful expression ; and then sometimes he would throw the book down, and make satirical remarks upon the folly of believing in anything in this wgrld, especially in love and truth. And yet, at times, he so fully, unmistakably showed his love for me, in every tone and glance, that I knew it was only his pride that kept him silent, and made him struggle against his fancy for an unknown, penniless girl. Claude came home, on a short vacation, while Mr. Creveland was at Auntie's. The first time Claude called, I did not see him, for I was busy reading to Mr. Creveland, and Auntie did not send for me. MISS RICHARDS' BOY. 49 But he came again, the next day; and oh, how glad I was to see him ! I thought he looked pale, and his honest blue eyes seemed unnaturally large. I told him I knew he was studying too hard. " Yes, he was studying hard," he said. " Besides his usual studies at college, he was studying law, at spare hours, with Mr. Lansing, the lawyer, and friend of Mr. Cleveland's. It would help him, he said, when he left college. He would not have to spend so much time in his law studies then, and he was in haste to get along as fast as possible ; for he wished to repay Mr. Creveland for the help he had given in his education. He should insist on paying back every penny of it," he said, proudly. I had a vague heartache after he had gone. I was worried, I said, to see him looking so pale. And I repeated to myself, with a good deal of emphasis, "If he were my own boy, I could not love him any better." Mr. (Vrvrland was very kind to Claude, and after he went away tli at night, spoke of him in the kindest manner, but with an odd agi- tation, I fancied. I remember, thinking, in a dreamy fashion, that night, after I laid my head upon my pillow, that if Mr. Cleveland's love did, indeed, prove stronger than his pride, and if I should, in the future, become mistress of all his riches, why, how much I might do for Claude. How I could smooth his path in life ! I know I thought a great deal more about my happiness, in helping him to a grand future, than I did of my own happiness, in enjoying such grandeur. The six weeks rolled away at last, and the day came when Mr. Creveland was to leave us. He had a fancy to walk over to the Hall, through the little foot-path in the park ; and though Auntie proposed to have the carriage sent for, he wouldn't hear to it. So Auntie had to content herself with making preparations for a dinner of uncom- mon magnificence, for he said he wouldn't go until afternoon. 4 50 JOSS RICHARDS' EOT. It was Saturday ; there was no school, and I was at home for the entire day. I could hear Auntie and Jane bustling about from kitchen to pantry, and from cellar to kitchen, as I sat with my sew- ing, in my favorite seat, by the western window of the sitting-room. It was a pleasant little nook, for on the broad, old-fashioned window- sill, I had a window-box filled with delicate ferns, and geraniums of different colors, and two or three climbing-plants, that reached up, trying to enfold the cage where my two canaries sang. All the morning, Mr. Creveland had acted odder, more restless, more mysterious than ever. He now came in, and advancing to the window, leaned against the opposite side, and stood looking down upon me. I felt that his eyes were upon me, though I did not look up, but stitched away, as if my life depended upon it. How the birds sang! As if they desired to give an extra melo- dious serenade to speed our departing guest. "Foolish little birds!" said Mr. Creveland, softly. "Don't you think so, Miss Hamilton ? " " Foolish ? Why, Mr. Creveland ? " " To sing so merrily, when they are captives. I should think their hearts would be breaking." " Perhaps they are unselfish. Maybe they are singing for others, to make others happier, and so forget their own condition/' I spoke lightly, and smiled. But as I glanced up into my compan- ion's face, the smile died upon my lips ; for if love and sorrow ever looked out of mortal eyes, they were looking then from the dark, beau- tiful eyes of Hugh Creveland. "Eva Miss Hamilton I want to ask you a question," he said. He paused a moment, and then went on rapidly. " Suppose you were a captive, shut up in a gloomy cell, chained down with heavy chains, which you could not break ; no matter who forged the chains, whether * it were yourself or another. If you were in that gloomy dungeon, no MISS RICHARDS' BOY. 51 sunshine, no bloom, no beauty to bless your life, if, in your gloom and despair, a little bird should come and sit in the narrow slit in the wall above you, and sing* sweet songs to you a little innocent bird, with heaven's own sunshine on its wings would you reach up there, to where it sat above you, and draw it down into the gloom and danger, gather it to your heart, and try to make your ow r n love take the place to it of the freedom it had lost, of the sweet air of heaven it must ivsiirn for your sake ? Would you ? Would it be too selfish ? " I looked up at him, wonderingly. He was gazing down upon me with a strange expres- sion, inexpressibly sad, and laid his hand lightly upon my head. " You don't answer, and you look half-fright- ened ; and I'll tell you what I think," said he, with his tone suddenly changing. " I think he would be a wretch, a self- ish villain. And now, mavourneen, 1 want you to sing to me. Sing to me about the brave knight of Normandy, who left his sweetheart and his native land for the battle-field, and died, AND SO HE DISAPPEARED. shouting victory." He went and stood in the open hall-door, and I sat down to the piano and commenced singing. I had often sang to him this old Eng- 52 MI88 RICHARDS' BOY. lish ballad. But now, before I had sung even the first verse through, I saw him, from the open window, walking with long strides through the gate into the park ; and so he disappeared. When Auntie discovered he was gone, she was indignant. " Here it is one o'clock," said she, " and dinner most ready, and everything doing so splendid. It is a shame and a disgrace." I did not tell her of his strange talk to me ; but I joined with her in saying, that his conduct was " extremely strange." " Strange ? I should say strange ! Who ever saw a man that wasn't strange ? " No description can do justice to her scornful empha- sis on the word man ; and her face showed all the depth of contempt she felt, as she added, " There haint no more dependence on any of the race than there is in my old clock." And while she was speaking, as if to add force to her illustration, the timepiece struck nearly a hundred. And yet it was strange that his sudden, singular way of leaving, his absence did not cause me disquiet. I was not at all unhappy. In fact, it seemed as if some weight had been lifted from my heart, as if 1 could breathe more easily. It was in the third week after Mr. Cleveland's departure that Auntie took a severe cold, and one day was obliged to keep her bed the most of the day. She wouldn't let me stay at home. She said it was nothing but a cold, and she should get better soon. But when I returned from my school in the afternoon, I found her apparently worse. There was a certain herb, however, that grew on the banks of the lake in Creveland Park, that she professed to have some faith in; and so I offered at once to go and get some of it. It grew near the edge of the lake ; and after I had gathered my little basketful of it I ought to have returned directly ; but the blue, placid water, shining so serenely through the green leaves and boughs, persuaded me to stay, and I went down to the border of the lake to gather some of the lovely ferns that grew in such rich profusion. MISS KICHARDS' BOY. 53 There was a great gnarled stump hanging over the water. On the very outmost edge of it was a cluster of the most delicate and exquisite ferns, like dainty emerald feathers. That bunch, I thought, I must have. I stepped out confidently, and was stooping down to pick it, when suddenly, without any warning, the root fell with me, and I sank I FELT MYSELF LIFTED UP. into the deep waters below me. But, as I fell, I gave a wild cry, that rang through the silent woods. " Claude ! Claude ! " was my exclamation. Why did I not call upon my hero, my mysterious friend ? But no ! At that moment, when I was facing death, it seemed to me as if all my hope on earth was in Claude. Suddenly I felt myself lifted up in a strong arm, and heard a voice speaking courage to me. But I heard only the first tones, for at the sudden transition from death to life, I fainted. 54 MISS RICHARDS' BOY. When I recovered consciousness, I was lying on the green shore, and Hugh Creveland was kneeling beside me, chafing my cold fingers. As I looked up at him and tried to speak, he took me in his arms, as if I were a baby, and strode on toward Auntie's with long steps. I looked up in his face rather timidly. " I have saved your life, little one," he said. " Don't you think I ought to have some claim upon it now ? Don't you, in a way, belong to me in the future ? " I was terribly agitated and confused, I know, and I could think of nothing better to say than to ask him to put me down, and let me walk. "You couldn't lift your hand to your head a minute ago," lie said. "Keep still. What do you suppose Miss Cobb will say? She will admit hereafter that I have ' my properties,' will she not ?" But I insisted upon trying to walk. And seeing that it really troubled me, he let me have my way. At first, I was obliged to lean heavily upon his arm, for my head felt very weak and giddy. We walked a short distance in silence, and then Mr. Creveland said : " I haven't been to your house for some time, have I ? Not since that day I called for the song about the brave knight, who gave his life and died shouting for victory. When I left you, I meant to stay away from you, like a good villain. But to-day, as I was taking leave of the Hall for a while, as fate, or luck, or chance would have it, I thought, while the carriage went round the road as far as Miss Cobb's, I would take this short route through the park, and stop there and bid you good- bye. I supposed it was the fiend that prompted me, as usual, he having the guardianship of my affairs generally. But I must have been mis- taken; it must have been an angel. I believe in omens ; and this must be a good one, is it not ? For I have saved your precious life. Do you know it, little one ? And when I think those sweet brown eyes would never have opened again in the world had it not been for me, surely they must look kindly upon me in the future, will they not ? " MISS RICHARDS' BOY. 55 I assured him that " they would ; that I should always regard him kindly." Not without tears, for I felt weak and nervous. But he would not listen to any t hunks for what he had done. And just then we came out by Auntie's, and saw Mr. Cleveland's carriage standing by the gate. He went with me to the door, and looking down upon the water-soaked garments, said "he thought he would drive back home for a few. moments, to make himself a little more presentable." And bid- ding me good-bye, and telling me to make haste to put myself in Miss Cobb's kind hands at once, and leaving his good wishes for her, he sprang into his carriage, and was driven back to the Hall. Auntie, forgetting her own indisposition, seemed to think I was in imminent danger. So I was put to bed, in close companionship with hot bricks and flat-irons, while my throat was smarting under the effects of hot ginger and pepper tea. I remember thinking, as I dropped off into sleep, how much it was like one of my romances ; that my mysterious hero had actually res- cued me from death, and that I owed my life to him. But still, I recollect that I thought a great deal more in fact, it was my last thought before I went to sleep, " of what Claude would say when I told him how nearly I had met my death, and how terrible it would have been if I had died there, without seeing him once more." It was about a week after Mr. Creveland left the Hall, that I received a surprise. It was no less than an invitation from the " stony-hearted," to make them a visit. The letter, however, bore no signs of stony-heartedness. It was warm, cordial, sincere. They professed themselves as extremely anxious to see the young lady, for whom their relative had entertained such a warm regard. I could not refrain from marveling somewhat, why, after they had been so successful in curbing their anxious desire to see me for over two years, it had, at this late hour, broke forth so overpoweringly. 56 MISS RICHARDS' BOY. But .their invitation was so pressing, that I did not really know how to refuse it ; and as I had a long vacation at that time, there was really no reason for my refusing. My fine gowns, for which I had no use during my stay at Auntie's, needed only a little making over to do nicely. I told Auntie the change would do me good, and she heartily agreed with me, and so, also, did Mr. Capelin, who had dropped in to try to borrow a f aiming- mill. I said I would be glad to see my old home once more, and I really had a strong curiosity to see the " stony-hearted." I gave a great number of reasons why I wanted to make the visit, but I never chanced to mention what I know I thought, the first thing in the morning, and the last at night, that I would see Claude again. I said to myself, that this desire was only natural, for perhaps I could influence him not to work too hard. Perhaps he was getting into bad habits. I thought I would like, above all things, to be a sort of maternal guardian angel to him ; for if he were my own boy, I could not be more anxious to have him do well. I invariably ended my reveries in this way. But there was no need of any apprehension concerning him. I found him grown so manly and self-possessed, that, instead of my being a protector to him, it seemed more natural that he should pro- tect me. I could hardly, at first, realize the change. I felt that it would be a misnomer to call him my boy any longer. And he was respected and beloved by all, even by the " stony-hearted," who, I dis- covered, was not stony-hearted at all, only a very good-natured busi- ness man, much given to gay society and pleasure. His wife was a gentle, inoffensive little woman, and they both seemed glad to see me. There was not much of the looks of my old home, I found ; it was much gayer and grander. They had a great deal of company, and went much into society. But, after all, Mrs. Lansing had a way of making the house seem home-like and pleasant, and I enjoyed MISS RICHARDS' BOY. 57 myself quite well. I had not been there long, before I discovered that I owed my invitation to visit them, to Mr. (Vrveland, who was a great friend of theirs. He boarded at a hotel in the place. It was due to his influence, also, I found, that Claude was made so much at home there. How very good he was to Claude ! It really warmed my heart to him. I said to myself, I had no idea there was so much goodness in human nature. Mr. Creveland came often to visit me. After a time, I could see that he fought no more against his liking for me. His pride, as I thought it was, that had stood in the way of his love, yielded at last to his passion. He. became more devoted every day. And I saw that all my ambitious dreams and desires were likely to be realized, that I was in a fair way of being a rich man's wife just my ideal, too, a mysterious, erratic lover, in truth, he was mis- tress of Creveland Hall. Why, I had thought that just to be mistress of that grand old mansion, would make perfect bliss ; and so, of course, I was happy. I remember assuring myself often that 1 was very happy, indeed. Claude came to see me often at first. But after a while lie did not come so much ; he was too busy, he said. I told him he was killing himself with hard work, and his pale face showed it. But what a brave, honest face it was ! And it grew still more manly and noble every day. But he was evidently working too hard. What with his regular studies, and his study of the law out of school-hours, it pained me to see it. But I never thought to wonder why it was. I never asked why even the lightest fancy that he was ill, or suffering in any way, sent such a pang to my heart. Why, when Mr. Creve- land was my hero, the very personification of my romantic visions, the thought of his danger, which the doctor still prophesied, I could endure calmly, while the thought of Claude's suffering seemed to me harder than to suffer myself. 58 MISS RICHARDS' BOY. But Claude laughed at my anxious face, and my sage advice. He said he was all right, that he was getting along splendidly ; that by the time he left college, he should have a very good knowledge of the law ; should have to spend only a short time in the law office, so Mr. Lansing told him. "And then," said he to me, one evening, as we chanced to be alone for a few minutes, " then I shall have all the world before me. 1 suppose by that time you will be my Lady Creveland." I said nothing, either to deny it, or acknowledge it ; and Claude was silent for a moment, while his blue eyes looked searchingly, but very sadly, into mine, and then he added : 4fc Yes, you wdll be a grand lady, and I I shall be a poor man, lonely and hard-working. And being rather a soft-hearted fellow, w r ho would love a happy home, why, I shall probably be looking for the little blue-eyed maiden that you used to advise me to wait for." "What is the use of being so extremely foolish, Claude?" said I, with unnecessary tartness. "Why, it was your own advice, Eva " " I can see no good reason for your recalling every idiotic tiling I may have said in the past. Life has nobler and wiser duties to perform than searching for eyes of different colors." And I remem- ber I talked considerably, and very seriously, to him concerning life, its duties and responsibilities. It was not a very long lecture, how- ever, for Mrs. Lansing, coming in, interrupted our conversation. Knowing Mr. Cleveland's restless, unquiet nature so well, it did not surprise me so much, when, after I had been at Mrs. Lansing's about five w r eeks, he should be overtaken with one of his dissatisfied, restless moods, and finally should go away suddenly and abruptly, leav- ing no word where he was going, or when he was coming back. Good-natured Mrs. Lansing rallied me a little, on the sudden absence of my admirer. But she, although comparatively a new MISS RICHARDS' EOT. 59 acquaintance, was familiar with his erratic ways, and said he would probably return as suddenly as he went. But I found life, notwithstanding his absence, very pleasant and delightful. There was a constant succession of boat-rides, picnics, croquet, and evening parties ; and I found I could enjoy them all ; for Claude always went when I did. Mr. Creveland had been gone just one week, when I rose, one morning, with a severe headache, and so was unable to go to a picnic that we had planned for that day. I made Mrs. Lansing go, how- ever, telling her all I needed was rest, and that a good sleep would make my head feel as well as ever. It did ; for in the afternoon I woke up entirely refreshed. The afternoon was nearly gone, and I stood by a window, looking dreamily out, listening to the murmur of the fountain in the yard below, when I heard a quick step in the hall, and in a moment a servant ushered Mr. Creveland into my presence. He had returned, it seemed, as suddenly, and abruptly, as he had gone. He came directly up to me, and took one of my hands in both of his own, saying : " Are you glad to see me ? " I, of ^course, said some polite, commonplace words ; but, as I did so, I looked up in his face.- The old unquiet, restless look was gone, and its place was one of stern resolve. He still held my hand, and his grasp was almost painful. " Shall I tell you what I have come back for?" he said; and without waiting for an answer, he went on. " I have come back for you, little one. I tried to run away, not from you, but from myself, from fate. But your sweet, brown eyes have been stronger than my will. They have drawn me back to you, little one. Will yoti come to me ? Can I make you happy ? I love you, I love you." Surely, this was all I had dreamed of, had hoped for. To be 60 MISS RICHARDS' BOY. mistress of Creveland Hall, the chosen one of my romantic, mysterious lover ! Why, then, did my heart sink down so low at the thought of that grand future? Sink so low, as his trembling voice went on: " My life has been full of fancies, but for the first time I love passionately, with all my strength and heart. No woman was ever to me what you are, so pure, so unworldly, so innocent. I am not like you, God knows ; but your sweet love shall make me better. This little hand," and he raised it to his lips, and kissed it, "this dear hand shall rule me at will." It was all coming true, then, all the old dream. And my hand was the one destined to guide him, save him. How I had dreamed of this ! And in my vision it had been such a delightful and satis- factory task. Why, then, did it seem suddenly so utterly distasteful and impossible ? I withdrew my hand from his, and turning away, looked out into the gathering shadows. I suppose my silence gave him hope. He thought I was too shy to speak, to look at him. "Tell, me, Eva, could you love me well enough to leave home and country for my sake ? To let me be all the world to you, as you would be to me ? Will you be my own, my beauty, rny darling ? " Afterwards, I remembered that he did not say the word wife to me, but I did not notice it at the time. He took my hands in his again, very tenderly. " If you will consent to bless my life with your sweet presence, everything that wealth can give you shall be yours," he said. " There are lovelier lands than this, my darling. We will leave this dull, wretched country ; I hate it all. We will go to some brighter clime, and there be happy." I thought of Creveland Hall, and its stately beauty and magnifi- cence ; and I said, almost without thought that I was thinking aloud : "There can be no place lovelier than Creveland Hall." MISS RICHARDS' BOY. 61 u I hate Crcvcland Hall ! " said he, with a sudden frown. But his tone softened again immediately. " You shall live there, after a time, if you like. You shall choose your own home, my beauty. You shall be queen, and I will be your slave." Smooth, and fair, and rosy, stretched the path before me. The door of my Spanish castle stood open. What was it that barred my entrance ? What was dearer to me than grandeur or glory ? A form stood before me that would not let me pass. Now that I was free to choose, now that the moment had come that I must choose my future, I well knew that one curl of Claude's brown hair was dearer to me than all the world beside. Mr. Creveland was looking into my face intently. I could ni'vrv hide my emotions. " Tell me ; I can bear it. Tell me, for God's sake ! Is it that you can't love me?" My tears were falling now, partly in pity for the pain in his face ; partly, I think, for my old dreams of splendor and glory, that were vanishing. " Do you love some one else ? Tell me the truth." "I I am afraid I think I do." "Who is it?" His look always compelled my obedience. "Claude. Claude Richards." He looked at me silently, with a look I never saw on his face, as changeable as it always was. Then he said, sternly, more as if he was questioning time and eternity, than me : " Do you believe in retribution ? Do you believe in these old words, 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord?' I do. If you ever hear them doubted again by any one, tell them there was OIK* man who believed them to be truth, knew them to be true as sorrow." 62 MISS RICHARDS' BOY. He clasped me for a moment in his arms, and I felt his hot breath, his kisses on my face ; and then he almost threw me from him, and left the room and the house. And so my one grand lover vanished, and the walls of my ideal castle fell into ruins. I passed slowly into the garden, and stood, listening to the dreamy murmur of the fountain, and thinking of Claude, when suddenly I heard a step beside me, and looking up, I saw the visible reality of my thoughts standing there before me. " I found the doors all open, so I walked in," he said. I made no reply. I only smiled upon his face. It was so delight- ful to see him again; to look into his clear, honest eyes, that held no mystery or remorse ; to meet his warm, true hand-clasp ; and to know that nothing separated us now, if he willed it so. But his blue eyes looked rather sad and weary to-night. " Mr. Creveland has returned, it seems. I met him by the gate/' he said. " Yes ; he has just gone from here." " Is it true, then, Eva, what every one says ? " he asked, with a trembling voice. " He has asked me to marry him." He did not speak. " You are his friend, Claude. Tell me, would you accept him ? " Suddenly he let go my hand, which he had held till then. " He has been good to me. I can't advise you." I could not bear the pain in his voice, in his honest eyes. " I have refused him," I cried. " Can you guess the reason ? " How his face lit up ! He caught my hands again in his. u I refused him, because I love somebody else." His lips were very near my face, as he whispered his next words, too dear, too sacred to repeat. MISS RICHARDS' BOY. 63 We stood there a long while in the sweet moonlight, as ridicu- lously hopeful and happy as love and poverty could make us. We made great plans for the future, or he did, for I had quite lost my old flow of eloquence, and preferred listening to him to speaking. We should IK; poor, of course, at first. But our little home should hold such happiness, such rest, such sweet content. He whispered how he would care for me, would shield me, work for me. And though he had no wealth to offer me, surely such a true love as his must bring a blessing down from on high. But as for me, I thought if I could only be with him, and make him happy, it would be happiness enough for me. After he had left me, I went up into my room, a happy woman, although I had just renounced a for- tune, and pledged myself to a life of poverty and privation. Mrs. Lan- sing had not come yet, but I ex- pected her every minute. And it was time to dress for their late din- ner. But as I was entering my room, a servant handed me a letter that had just come for me. In 64 MISS RICHARDS' EOT. that letter was a strange revelation that drove all other thoughts out of my head. It was from Auntie, and exceedingly lengthy, as all of her epistles were. It seemed to be written in great excitement, and read as follows : ''My DEAR GIRL: "As I have heerd tell, it comin' right straight to me from them that wont lie, that a villain, that shan't be named between us two, made his black soul blacker than it was before, by tryin' like a black wolf to devour a helpless lamb, that I needn't mention the name of. This is to tell you to shun him as you would a SERPIENT." This word was written in larger letters than any of the rest of the letter. It was underscored deeply, and spelled just as she would have pronounced it, " serpient." I know it impressed me much more deeply than it would had it been spelt in the usual way. " Shun him as you would a serpient, whose bite means death. It has all come to light, all his villainy unexpected. She bein' took half-crazy with the shock of heerin' of it, and most dead every way. The gardner come after me in the dead of night. And she let it all out to me. And she is his lawful wife, and lays at the pint of death ; and Miss Richards'es boy is Hugh Creveland's own son. He married her at college, a poor girl just over from England, with nothing but her beauty and principles, that he couldn't overthrow and trample under. So he married her, but made her swear not to tell, kept her hid in a little cottage out in the country, where none of his friends ever mistrusted her ont. But afterward, when Claude was a little fellow, he made her think it was a sham marriage. And she a livin', crushed down under the idee all her days, . but still a lovin' the scamp so well that she come here as his housekeeper, a pretendin' to be a widow, jest to run the chance of seein' of him now and then. But lately, only a few days ago, she come across some papers that proved the hull thing out, letters from the minister that married 'em, a friend of his then. And after ruinin' her hull life, agonizin' her with thoughts of her false marriage, and chasin' after other women promiscous, and never darin' to marry any girl outright the shame-faced black vil- lain she worships the very ground he walks on, which I can't help callin' her a natural fool, though, as I say, she lays at the pint of death, and the boy been wrote to to-day by the doctor, to come home quick if he wants to see her alive, and that serpient wrote to by the same; though there would be but a precious few letters writ to him on the subject if there wasn't but one woman in the world to write 'em, as I told Mr. Capelin, jest now, who happened in to borrow a wagon exeltry. (How did he suppose MISS RICHARDS' BOY. 65 I would have a e.xeltry?) But lie agreed with me about the serpicnt, though he says the letter wont give him much comfort, for he presumed the doctor give it to him up and down, lie in' so worked up liy seein' that dyin' woman. And now I will end this epistol by warniu' of you again though, probable, after you read this, there wont be no nerd of it if you value your own soul's salvation in this world, or in any other world whaKumever, to *////// tit at serpicnt ! And if you want to make me happy a* a queen on her throne. e< te. lie did not iivi there in time to see his mother alive. He arrived in the morning, and she died at midnight. The patient heart was still, the only true, faithful heart that Hugh Creveland had ever known, and yet had scorned. She left many lbut only these words which had seemed to soothe her dying moments, u Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us." And Dr. Sherman never dreamed that that mute prayer carved in marble, was raised over the grave of his mother. TEIE GOOD IJOOK. THE RESCUE. N the small village of Atholton, that nestled at the foot of a northern mountain, there were two men who had deserted their wives John Ford and Newell Foster. And yet the village paper, the Weekly Enlightener, which paused in its glorious career of enlightening the darkness of the world to condemn, as a righteous paper should, the crime of John Ford, in fact, devoted a column and a half to a very large-worded editorial denunciation of him, said not a word about Foster. Sympathy, without stint or measure, and a few dollars in money were given to Mrs. Ford, but not a pitying glance was bent on Mrs. Fos- ter. And yet I think her condition incomparably the worse of the two ; for when John Ford deserted his wife he took his body along, while Fos- ter left his at home for his wife to care for, to supply its needs, to be a constant anguish to her, reminding her every moment of the bright days before he had deserted her. Some people have a wrong impression, I think, in regard to these things. They think it is necessary for a man to run away in order to (87) gg THE DESERTED WIVES. desert his wife. I do not. Newell Foster had left his wife, just as truly as if he had betaken himself to Australia, or Ethiopia, or where not ; and she was just as truly a forlorn, desolate, broken-hearted woman, as if she were outwardly, as she was in the sight of God, alone. Mrs. Foster knew this. Ah, yes! Let her midnight tears bear witness to the truth. John Ford and his wife had a terrible quarrel before he ran away, lawyers and a few meddlesome neighbors helping the matter along. Mr. Foster and his wife had had no quarrel. No officious friend had told Mrs. Foster that they u wouldn't stand it, so," and u to stand up for her rights," for Mrs. Foster never complained ; and as for rights, I don't think Mrs. Foster thought she had any, at least she did not after she had been married a few years. In the case of Ford, a woman was con- nected a woman whose mission in the world seemed to be to prove how low a soul may plunge into the depths of degradation, and how many weak souls she can carry downward with her. Newell Foster had been true to the letter of his marriage vows. Since he had stood at the altar, ten years before, with the one woman he had chosen out of the world, he had "forsaken all others," as he promised then to do. What then had brought this state of things to pass with Mr. and Mrs. Foster ? Well, I think Foster was disappointed in his wife. He thought he was marrying an heiress. Not that he married her entirely for her wealth. She had plenty of other attractions for him in those far-off days of their courtship. But Mr. Foster was a shrewd, keen, business man, who looked out for the main chance ; and it was unpleas- ant to him, to say the least, that his respected father-in-law failed, dur- ing the first year of their marriage failed, and hid himself from his hungry creditors in the grave, leaving his only child no heritage but a dishonored name. This was one thing. And, for another, she had borne him no children. And then she disappointed him in many ways. Her health was not good. She had been a very bright and blooming THE DESERTED WIVES. 39 girl when he married her ; but ten years of married life, with Newell Foster for a husband, had very thoroughly weeded the roses out of her cheeks and the brightness and elasticity out of her spirits. She was now a pale, spiritless household drudge, still worshiping, unhappily, the man who had taken her from her happy girlhood home, and then deserted her. It was this love that still remained so warm and true in her heart that made the very sting of her grief. If she could have been so indignant with him that she could have resented in spirit the constant slights he put upon her, the daily humiliation of his indiffer- ence, the harsh words and looks, the hardships of labor and endurance, she could have borne it better. But she loved him, and love always makes a woman a slave a slavery sweeter than freedom, as many a happy heart will testify, when the love is mutual, and tender, and gen- erous. But in the case of Mrs. Foster it was a failure, so far as happi- ness was concerned. Mrs. Ford's husband had left her with six little children, needy and destitute. There were plenty among those who had known her in more prosperous days to recommend the orphan asylum or the poor house. But there was one pale woman who opened her arms, longing to clasp the weakest and youngest and most helpless in them. Foster did not object when his wife proposed to adopt little Winnie Ford for their own child. Of course, his wife would take the care of it. He would have a separate room during its babyhood ; he couldn't be disturbed. But the child was sweet and wonderfully bright-looking. She might grow up to be an honor to him, and he would never have any children of his own. So little Winnie Ford Foster came to live with them, and the mother-love, that had never been satisfied, found expression. No mother could be tenderer in care and watching to her own child than was Mrs. Foster to the little one Providence had thus given to her arms. It was, perhaps, two years after this, for Winnie was a most beautiful arid engaging child, just running around and beginning to say 90 THE DESERTED WIVES. a few words, when Mr. Foster resolved to emigrate to California. He thought he could do better there. Of course his wife made no objec- tions to anything he proposed ; if she had, it would not have changed matters at all. So, one September day they set out, poor Mrs. Ford, who was having a hard time to keep her children's bodies and souls together, dropping many tears on Winnie's little fair face. Arrived at their destination, Mr. Foster did do well. He made more money in a year and a half than he had ever made in his life before. And, of course, he was not satisfied, and wanted to make more ; so he bought a claim, hired a gang of miners, and proceeded to the distant canyon, where his claim was situated. Mrs. Foster was beginning to like the mild climate of San Fran- cisco. She had formed some pleasant acquaintances amongst Eastern people, who, like them had emigrated hither, and her comparative free- dom from labor had given back to her a portion of her lost health. She dreaded inexpressibly the new wild home amongst the mountains, the lonely life, with only rough miners for associates, and the hard labor that must be her portion. Mr. Foster was abundantly able to hire ser- vants to do the cooking for his men, but I don't think the idea that he could do so had ever entered his brain. He was so accustomed to the services of his legally-bound handmaiden, that, to do the man justice, I certainly do not think the thought occurred to him, that he could employ another to relieve her. Early in May they were established in their new home, Mr. Foster's healthy, handsome countenance beaming with content, as he overlooked the labor of his men ; for his venture was proving more successful than he had dared to hope for. Mrs. Foster's face looked more faded and worn than ever, for she had no gratified ambition to inspirit her. Greater wealth would not affect any favorable change in her circum- stances, judging from the past. And poor, patient, weary eyes, looking into frying-pan and gridiron and sultry oven interiors, they had no time TllK DESERTED WIVES. 91 to look away from the poverty of her surroundings indoors, to the glory of the mountains, the glory of the forests, the glory of the waters ; for it was on the bank of a rushing torrent that their shanty was situated. The rough board walls of her cabin kept the glory and the sun- shine from the tired eyes, as palace walls have sometimes done when sick hearts have languished within them. But little Winnie was happy. Her child eyes, so new "to all the world, found unending delight in all the wonderful, beautiful things about her. She was the one ray of sunshine in Mrs. Foster's toilsome, loveless life. Mr. Foster was proud of his " little daughter," as he called her and thought of her. Her exceeding beauty and intelligence gratified his ambition and gave him hopes of a brilliant future for her. And, to do him justice, lie was a great lover of children, and the disap- pointment of not having any of his own had been very hard for him to bear. They all loved her ; and, in fact, it would be very difficult to help loving little Winnie Foster. Her face was sweet as an apple-blos- som ; just such a healthy, cheerful beauty, too ; none of your delicate, wax-like, hot-house blossoming in her round, rosy little face. Her hair hung around her brow and cheeks like wavy masses of spun gold ; and her eyes were like the blue gentians on the dear northern hillsides, that Mrs. Foster remembered so well. All day long that little golden head could be seen flitting about the cabin. The miners grew to love it, hold it in a tender, sacred rever- ence, as they did the memories of their own little ones far away. But, above all, there was one man amongst them whose love for her knew no bounds. This was a man with wild, uncouth looks, and face nearly cov- ered with a beard of patriarchal growth. His face was rendered more forbidding, too, by a long scar, newly healed, that cut across the fore- head and one cheek. This man, who had been hired by Mr. Foster after they had nearly reached their destination, was a stranger to all ; but Mr. and Mrs. Fos- 92 THE DESERTED WIVES. ter were often puzzled by a curious resemblance, in the dark eyes, to some one they had once seen. He was faithful to his work and to his employer's interests ; but he was not a favorite with the men. He was too reticent surly, they called it ; and as he seemed to wish to have nothing to do with them, they looked upon him with distrust and dislike. But Winnie loved him. His rough, scarred face was beautiful to her, for it always wore a smile for her. He was never too tired to tell her the long stories she demanded of him. He gloried in the joyful ignominy of being her horse, her dog, her elephant, or whatever other animal her capricious fancy might dictate. She rode in triumphant security on his shoulder, queenly mistress of these refractory animals, her small, white hands clasped about his neck. To thus bear her up the hill to the cabin, prancing heavily if he were a horse, or with long, THE DESERTED WIVES. 93 unwieldy strides if he were her camel, was to Jake Wilder suffi- cient reward for the labors of the day. It was one lovely morning in August that she appeared at his side, as he was rocking his rough cradle, seeking for golden reward. " Dake, what o'o doonin' ?" He left off his work at once to. tell her what he was doing told with a kiss on the little fresh, eager face. He was glad to think of this afterward glad to think that he stopped his work for a moment, wiped his hands on his coarse miner garb, and lifted her up in his brawny arms for one of the flying leaps through the air that she relished so well. He Avas obliged to go up the hill, then, to the cabin, and she at once proposed that he should go as " her el'f ant." He consented, with great readiness and delight, and, placing her on his shoulder, he pranced solemnly up the hill, like a good-humored elephant bearing a fairy princess, went in his best" el'f ant" tread, slower and more majestic than his ^ *j-i-ER l_ 3 FANT gait when he was a horse. At the cabin door he set her down with another kiss ; and she 94 THE DESERTED WIVES. looked up in his face with her trusting child eyes, and patted his rough cheeks tenderly, and said : " I love you, Dake ; you'r dood ; you'r my dood old Dake." In a few minutes she was at her mother's side. "What o'o doonin', mamma?" This was a great habit of the little maiden, asking every one what they were doing. Everything was so new to her ; she had so many things to learn; people were doing such strange things all the time; everything was strange to her ; she must be constantly asking, in order to find out things. " What am I doing ? I am working my life away. I am killing myself." And poor, despairing, hard-worked Mrs. Foster dropped her rolling- pin in the bread-tray, and sank down in a chair. MRS. FOSTER CAUGHT HER TO HER BREAST. Mrs. Foster was not pale this morning. Her cheeks were flushed with a deep red hue, and her eyes shone with a strange, unnatural bril- liancy. She had a terrible headache, was nervous, so she thought. All THE DESERTED WIVES. 95 the morning her life, so tiresome, so bare, had been confronting her. Her husband had been unusually cold and stern to her, too. Winnie looked ii}) into her mother's despairing, passion- worked face with inno- cent, frightened eyes, and pretty soon her pretty lips began to quiver. Seeing this, Mrs. Foster caught her to her breast. u Oh, my darling, if it were not for you, I would wish to die ! No- body loves me but you. Nobody would care if I did die. But you would miss me, wouldn't you, my precious ? " " Papa would cry, too," said little Winnie, with an effort at child- ish comfort. " No, papa wouldn't care. Papa don't love me," cried the poor woman, bursting into tears ; for she was unstrung by the near approach of the terrible sickness of which she was as yet unaware. " Winnie loves mamma. Winnie will be dood dirl all day, two four nine days." Had her scant knowledge of arithmetic enabled her promise to extend to a longer date, it would most assuredly have done so, so wrung and troubled was her childish heart at the unusual spectacle of her mother's tears. Seeing the trouble on the baby face and the grieved quiver in the childish voice, Mrs. Foster made a great effort to calm herself. And soon the little cabin was as quiet, to outward appearance, as if no gust of stormy passion had so lately swept through it. Mrs. Foster braced her fainting form to go on with her preparation for dinner ; and Winnie, soon as light-hearted as before, flitted about as usual. Mr. Foster was sitting on a bench, at some distance from the cabin, looking at some new specimens of ore one of his men had recently dis- covered. It was richer than had ever been taken before from his mines ; and he was sitting, lost in golden visions, with his sombrero drawn down over his handsome blonde face. 96 THE DESERTED WIVES. " What o'o doonin', papa ?" So absorbed was Mr. Foster in his golden dreamings, that, as he was sorry to remember afterward, he did not respond to her childish question till after it was three or four times repeated, and then he bade her " run away, lie was busy." But little Winnie had something upon her mind, and was not to be put away. " Papa, mamma is killing herself ! " "What is it?" This drew his attention very thoroughly. " What is it you say, child?" " Mamma is killing herself, and she said you wouldn't care ! She said you didn't love her ; and then mamma cried, she did. Don't you love her, papa ? She's a dood mamma, I fink." "What do you mean by her killing herself?" And then Winnie went on, with great minuteness, to explain the rise and progress of the conversation. "I said, 'Mamma, what o'o doonin'?' Mamma said, 'I killing myself, working.' " "Oh," cried Mr. Foster, with a relieved look. It was only a wom- anish, nervous complaining, that was all. But little Winnie went on : "That wasn't when she cried when she said she killing herself. She said you wouldn't care she dead. Then she cried, she did, awful hard, she cried. She said you didn't love her. Don't you love her, papa?" And little Winnie, who was constantly asking questions of every- body, and would, if possible, never give up her pursuit of knowledge upon any subject, in her eagerness to discover the truth of this most singular assertion of her mother, repeated the question, looking up into his face with innocent, wondering eyes. "Don't you love her, papa, my dood mamma?" " Love her ? Of course. What a question ! Run away, now ; I am busy." THE DESERTED WIVES. 97 And he turned away once more to examine his golden treasure, and delight in it. But, somehow, after the little form had flitted away, as he had bidden it, he couldn't help letting his mind wander from the golden treasure in his hands to the words of the golden-haired little preacher, who had so lately spoken to him. "Love his wife!" The words had come glibly enough to his lips when he was speaking to little Winnie. Of course he loved her! What a question! Wasn't she his wife his lawful wife? The idea of his love for her being called in question! He, a church-member he who read the Bible every Sab- bath, and who had always kept his heart from wandering after strange idols. Love his wife ! What an idea ! But he couldn't quiet his con- science, his remorseful emotions, by thus braving it out. His con- science, that had been his servant, a careless servant, too, sleeping at its post, woke up now, and was his master a more relentless and inex- orable master because it had so long slumbered, and was now arisen, a king indeed. In what way had he shown his love for her for years past ? Were frowns, and indifference, and cold, harsh words the language of love ? Was it in that way he had won her from all other suitors, in the long- forgotten spring-time of their lives? That sweet girl-wife, so fair, so dear, so blooming. "Her good mamma." Yes, she had been a good mother to the child, a good wife to him. Memories of her unselfish, patient devotion, her life given for him, rushed upon him like a wave a wave that, long held back by icy barriers, rushes on more overwhelm- ingly, relentlessly. There could not be a more complete abnegation of self than had been hers all through their married life. Her life had been given for his as truly as if she had laid it down for his sake on some battle-field. It was not an easy thing for him to stand thus, face to face, with conscience, with these remorseful memories, these new anguished thoughts of the patient love he had so long slighted. But he had make a home for her, so he sajd to himself ; he had supported her, 98 THE DESERTED WIVES. fed and clothed her. But this relentless conscience said to him, that he would have done all that for a servant, and never would have dared to treat a servant as he had her, knowing the servant would leave him if he did. This legally-bound, patient thrall he knew could never leave him, bound as she had been by her pride, her love for him. But lie had worked hard himself for their united interests, had been successful ; and was it not for her as much as himself ? Was it ? His conscience asked him now. Was it to gratify his ambitious desire to be a rich man, or was it to make his wife's life easier, happier, more perfect and complete that he had striven ? Many, many questions did his conscience put to him, questions which he tried to evade, but could not. But, above all, did his heart ache with the thought of the patient love, toiling, year after year, for his comfort, yielding to his most unrea- sonable wishes, patient with his upbraidings, his coldness, his cruel words, and loving him loving him through all. The sun stole upward and stood over his head, and slowly, silently the shadow of the pine tree crept toward the east. He did not notice that the dinner-horn, which always sounded punctually at noon, had not been heard, did not notice how far the shadow of the pine tree over his head was reaching eastward. He sat there, with his face in his hands, and his golden ore falling unnoticed in a glittering mass at his feet, till the loud sound of excited voices reached his ears, cpming from the cabin. He rose and followed the voices. The rough miners made way for him to enter his own door. And there, by the half-prepared dinner- table, fallen like a good soldier at her post, lay Mrs._Foster an honora- ble soldier, worthy of a commander's stars and straps, in that wide band of household martyrs who fall unknelled and undecorated by admiring nations, but who surely will not be forgotten by the great Chief Captain of the world when He makes out His true roll of honor. Dead ! So they all called her. Dead ! So the sorrow-stricken, . conscience-smitten man, white to his lips, said as he bent over her, call- THE DESERTED WIVES. 99 ing her by the old, loving names, that surely, if her spirit were still out- side the heavenly gate, would waken her to blissful consciousness. Dead ! And he could never tell her his remorse, never, never beg upon his knees for her forgiveness. But Mrs. Foster was not dead. Slowly did she come back out of the terrible fainting fit, that was like the twin-sister of death came back out of the shadow of the Valley awoke to a stupor and delirium MRS. FOSTER WAS NOT DKAD. that left her mercifully unconscious of another grief that fell upon the sorely-tried heart of her husband. Winnie was gone ! It was sometime before they thought of the child, so engrossed were they with the apparently dead woman. It was Jake Wilder who thought of her first. He was tlie first man to go, although they rushed out at once to search for her. Mr. Foster, although torn with anxiety about the child he loved so well, still stayed with his wife, of course. 100 THE DESERTED WIVES. At nightfall they came in despairing, went out again in the solemn darkness, their lanterns gleaming, like falling stars, through the forest- paths and up the woody side of the canyon. But it was near midnight THE SEARCH. when they came upon the first trace of her, a scrap of her white dress torn off by a thorny bush. It was on the direct path that led to a pre- cipitous bluff, hundreds of feet high, beneath which deep, muddy waters whirled and eddied. s Arrived here, one man, held by another strong hand, peered over the dizzy verge. It was no use, the man said, drawing back. No human pow r er could reach her if she had fallen down there. Even as the man said this, a child's cry was borne faintly upward from THE DESERTED WIVES. 101 the depths below. They were brave men, bred to danger, and they would undoubtedly have faced death with coolness and bravery, but they trem- bled and turned pale before that faint child-cry. Again, the man who had looked first, held by the same strong hand, peered downward over the straight, rocky wall, and there he could just discover, far, far down, amidst a cluster of bushes and stunted trees that grew out of a cleft in the steep wall, a faint glimmer of white. In falling over the cliff, midway to death, these bushes had caught the child, and had saved her. " No, no human power could save her." So the man said, shuddering as he looked downward. They only detained her for a moment at death's door. At this moment Jake Wilder came up from his search in another direction. " I will save her," lie said, ' or die with her." Life, to tell the truth, was not over sweet to Jake Wilder. A hundred times during the past year had despair urged him to end it, throw it down as a mis- erable failure. Now he would give it, give it for the sweet little North- ern Blossom, the one being in the world whose innocent little heart loved him, trusted him. In vain his rough mates endeavored to dissuade him from his suicidal purposes, his vain attempt, for no one could save the child no one, they declared. It was only throwing his life away, too. He knew it would be impossible to reach the child by going down- ward down that straight, steep, slippery wall. His only hope lay in reaching her from beneath, working his way out over the whirling, mad waters, and then toiling up the steep precipice, a little less steep here ; upward, toiling upward, with that little white form for an inspiration. We read of men whose conversion to good is the work of many years, toiling in their upward path toward good, helped by the inspiration of a purer soul, who leads them gently upward by her nobler example, learn- ing, by the love and patience of a human soul, above them, yet still beating for them, something of the Divine Love and patience that 102 THE DESERTED WIVES. shines downward upon the weakest, lowliest toiler, who looks upward through these earthly mists, seeking the heavenly light. And we read also of those whose soul's change is the work of a moment, wrought in some crisis, some great temptation resisted, some wonderful preservation, some despairing prayer, that God has answered in the midst of deadly peril. Who shall say that this rough miner's cry was not heard in Heaven his frenzied appeal, that perhaps he did not call a prayer the wild cry for Divine help, when his human strength was failing him the wild promise, that, if God would permit him to save the child, he would be a different man, a better man ? And so, in the night and the darkness, he worked on, struggling upward, despairing, but fainting not, for love of the little fair soul above him, toiling slowly upward, through the solemn shadows, near to the more solemn mystery of death, upheld by the Divine inspiration of love. It was a miracle ! That was what his wondering companions called it, as he sat at the foot of the precipice, with Winnie's little form pressed to his heart, and the morning light faintly dawning in the east, the fresh, pure light of another morning shining upon his uncovered brow, and his earnest eyes that were filled with a new purpose. They called it a miracle, and talked loudly about it. He said little. I have noticed that heroes are rarely garrulous concerning their heroic deeds. As soon as he could walk, he bore Winnie back to the camp, disdaining any help in carrying her. He said little, but his rough cheek, wet with tears, lay upon Winnie's little, fair face, the face of the child who loved him, trusted him ; and, as he bore her onward, he murmured often in her ear, " My child, my own child, my little Northern Blossom." Did the love and trust that he read in the pure little face, looking up into his so confidingly, encourage him, reminding him of the greater love, the greater trust, that never tires, never wearies, that yearns over the weakest and lowliest wanderer, longing to give him Divine wel- come home ? THE DESERTED WIVES. 103 Mrs. Foster lay for many weeks with death upon one side of her, and her husband's devoted, untiring love and care upon the other, uncertain to whom would be given the victory. And, in those long, long hours of watching and waiting, he learned more of the heart his- tory of the patient, reticent woman than he had ever known learned through the wild delirium of the aching heart, that had carried its bur- den so silently and patiently learned of the passionate love, that, like an eastern idolater, she had lavished upon her stone idol. It was not a stone idol now. No. His heart was very human in its aching, its despair, its longing that she might live, so that he could redeem the past, could teach her what love was, what it was to be guarded and shielded by loving care, could teach her what it was to be treasured, beloved, precious to the heart that had so long slighted her goodness, her long-suffering. When the delirium of the fever left her, a pale shadow hovering upon the mysterious intermediate realm between life and death, I think it was her husband's kisses upon her face, his loving words lavished so freely, that wrought the real miracle of restoration. Dr. Quackenbos thought it was his pills. As for the man they called Jake Wilder, the change wrought in him in that hour of peril and agony was not evanescent. He said little, but his life spoke. A weary woman in Atholton read of that change, in burdens lifted from her by a stronger hand, in letters doing her a tardy justice, in repentance, in promises of future well-doing. And so John Ford returned to his wife. Newell Foster sold his claim with large profits, and built a splendid mansion in his native village of Atholton, in which his wife and beauti- ful daughter dwelt like princesses. It was an elegant place, furnished as was no other house in the place. Well-trained servants relieved Mrs. Foster of all the drudgery of domestic toil. And people thought, as they looked in Mrs. Foster's happy, rosy face, that the content and hap- 104 THE DESERTED WIVES. piness that was to be so plainly read there were caused by the beauty of her surroundings and the ease of her life. But she knew, in her heart, that the secret of her joy was not in these, although they were very pleasant, but in this, that her husband, who had deserted her, had returned to her. In an humbler home, John Ford and his wife were practicing the old lesson they had scorned to learn once, to bear and forbear. Mr. Foster helped John Ford to a business that enabled him to support his family in comfort. And so John Ford returned to his wife, and was forgiven. And the Weekly Enlightener made a good thing out of it, in the way of an editorial, warmly commending the repentance and the forgiveness, in words nearly all of which were from three to four sylla- bles in length. And Newell Foster returned to his wife also ; and since God and his angels made note of it, I think it is of comparatively little moment that the editor of the Weekly Enlightener did not record the fact in its columns. MABEL WINGATE. RS. WINGATE was the President of the Deansville Female Dorcas Society for the re- lief of the heathens. The benighted state of the "hethings" (I am sorry to say she pronounced it thus,) was a constant source of uneasiness to the portly relict of Elnathan Wingate. Her eyes had always been noted for their far-reaching views, gifted like Mrs. Jelloby's with the faculty of looking calmly over house- hold wants and native sufferers into foreign jungles and cactus thickets, seeking after prowling heathens upon whom to bestow her charities. But I think for the past year she had been more solicitous than ever for their welfare, since the wife of young Dr. Dean had died, leaving the vacancy in the above society which Mrs. Wingate now so ably filled. We say young Dr. Dean, but he was not so very young ; he was past forty, to be exact. But he was always called the young doctor to distinguish him from his father, who had been the village doctor before him, and who still dwelt in the village with his good wife. John Dean the father, and Ellis Dean the son, (he was an only child,) were very popular in the village; in fact, the village took its name from the elder gentleman, he having owned the most of the (107) 108 MRS- WINGA1WS CHARITY, land upon which the village was founded, some fifty years before. The village had grown rapidly, and of a consequence, their wealth had increased; they were the richest men in the place, and, what is not always the case, they were the most respected and beloved. Mrs. Ellis Dean had been a childless woman, whose great heart ached over all suffering, and who had abundant means and leisure to bestow upon private and public charities. She attended well to the wants of her household ; her servants found in her a most indulgent and generous mistress. The poor and needy about her received her attention and bounty first, and then as she had still abundant means and time left, she next extended her care to more remote sufferers. Her husband was the most warm-hearted and charitable of men. This gentle woman having left him, he now dwelt alone with only ser- vants for companions in his great house overlooking the village. And rumor said he had been heard to observe to his close friend, the village clergyman, " that it was not good for man to live alone." It was a Sabbath noon that he was reported to have said this, the very Sabbath that Mabel Wingate came to church the first time, 011 her return from the boarding-school where she had been for the past five years. She had not been a pupil for the last three years. Rumor said she preferred the life of a teacher to that of being a dependent upon the bounty of a step-mother her father, who was rather a meek and easily influenced old gentleman, having made a very singular will, giving his wife the control of it all during her life. It made a great excitement in Deansville at the time, people very justly believing that it was a triumph of Mrs. Wingate' s rather plotting turn of mind. But that had taken place three years before, and newer excitements had driven it out of the minds of the people. But now Mabel had come home. Her step-mother had had a severe though short fit of sickness, and thinking she was about to die, had sent for MRS. WINGATETS CHARITY, 109 Mabel. Perhaps her conscience was aroused, but by the time Mabel readied her, her fever had abated, her conscience twinges also. But a new teacher was engaged for the term to fill Mabel's place, so she was forced to remain until she could get a new situation. The first Sabbath Mabel went to church, Dr. Dean thought he had never seen a lovelier face than hers. His pew was directly back of Mrs. Win- gate's. (It is said that Mrs. Wingate paid ten dollars extra to obtain that seat, it having been warmly sought for by the widow Kelley, and partly promised to three maiden sisters, the Misses Dagget.) Dr. Dean thought he had never seen a sweeter sight than that gently drooping head bending devoutly over her prayer book, the pearly neck sometimes gleaming through the long brown curls, the tender sensi- tive mouth, the large, soft, wistful brown eyes, that seemed pleading for love and sympathy. She kept these wonderful eyes bent very earnestly either upon her book or the minister's face, but once they lifted to his face as she left her seat. It was almost directly after this that he made to the clergyman this remark we have just quoted. Not a singular remark at all. Many bereaved ones have experienced the same sentiments. Many men surrounded by female relatives have experienced an overwhelming source of lonesomeness, and need of female society. Bereaved women, too, have experienced their firm conviction that it is not good to dwell alone. Mrs. "Wingate had said the same to him, when, soon after his wife's death, she sent for him to extract a tooth (nearly sound). She said to him with much feel- ing: "That it was awful lonesome 'livin" alone, when anybody had lost a dear companion." But she added immediately, for she thought of the doctor's reputation for charity, " that she felt ashamed to com- plain of lonesomeness when she thought of the hethings ; what was her lonesomeness compared with the hethings' lonesomeness." Dr. Dean did not give his opinion concerning the heathen's social state, and she continued with a warm gush of sentiment to ask his HO MRS. WING ATE' S CH AMITY. advice, whether red mittens, or striped bine and white ones would be the most acceptable to the young heathens. It was while she was asking him this question that Tom, "the boy she took" from the poor-house, came into the room with a load of wood. It was a very cold day, and the boy ventured, after he had laid the wood down, to spread his long thin hands before the cheerful blaze. Mrs. Wingate only looked at him, but the boy obeyed the look as he would a musket. He left the room instantly, and the doctor going out directly after- wards, found him shivering on the door-step, and wiping his eyes. " What is the matter ? " said the doctor, with his great, cheer- ful voice. " I wish I was a hething ; I would give a cent if I was one this minit." " Why do you wish that ? " said the doctor. " Because 1 am so cold, and haint nothin' to wear, and don't have no mittens, and if I was a hething, I should be tended to, and I am most froze this very minute ; I know I be." " Why don't you go in and warm you ? " "She wont lem'me stay in a minute, Miss Wingit wont; says I must work, says I don't earn my salt, and I don't eat much salt any way, I know I don't, and I am at it from mornin' till night, diggin' away at sunthin' or other. I wish to gracious Peter, I was a hething, I know I do." " Well, I guess you do have to work pretty hard now. But it is a long lane that never turns. There will be brighter days for you, sometime ; you will see there will, Tom. Now you run in and warm your fingers. Don't be afraid, she will let you stay." And opening the door, the doctor put his head in and called Mrs. Wingate, who came bustling to the door, with the sweetest of smiles. " Here is a little native object that you can spend some of the benevolence of your warm heart upon ; he says he is cold, and wants to go to the fire." MES. WINGATE'S CHARITY. " Bless the dear child ! why didn't he come right in ? " Tom knew, but he also knew it wouldn't do to tell his thoughts. So he slipped silently by and luxuriated in the warmth of the genial blaze while he could. He was not permitted to remain there long. But all the day while he toiled out in the cold, the words of the doctor cheered his lonely heart. " It is a long lane that never turns." This occurred about a year before Mrs. Wingate's sickness, when Mabel came home, and the doctor made the memorable speech to which we have referred, " That it was not good for man to live alone." Mrs. Wingate's convalescence was slow ; after a few weeks she seemed to all appearance well ; but every heart knoweth its own bitterness, and who may question the President of the Dorcas Society, as to the need of a physician. With great earnestness she continually affirmed " that she felt awful run down, and she must have the doctor every day or two." And she further remarked to her bosom friend, the grocer's wife, and the Vice-President of the Dorcas, " That Dr. Dean hadn't never been so punctual a comin', and never had n't stayed so long before as he did now ; he was dretful inspirin' in his conversation, made her think dretfully of her deceased companion." But the strongest sunshine casts the darkest shadow, and Mrs. Wingate informed the doctor one day " that after he went away, every time, she had to cry, because it brung up her loneliness more'n more ; made her think so much of her deceased companion, that she couldn't keep from cryin', though she knew it was wrong, knowin' her state was so much more comfortable than the nothings. But still no tongue could tell how much he reminded her of her deceased companion, and nobody could tell her lonesomeness only them who had gone through the same affectin' circumstances, and was in the same lonesome state." 112 MfiS. WlNGATfTS CHARITY. The doctor did not call the next day, nor all that week. But the next Sabbath, the wistful brown eyes so touched his heart with their tender sunshine, that Monday afternoon he called. Mrs. Wingate had left home that day for the first time. The Dorcas met that day at the Vice-President's, and the bosom friend could not be denied the privilege of her advice and company. As a truthful historian, I must conceal nothing, and regretting warmly as I do, that I cannot make my hero that faultless being that usually roams over the pages of magazines and periodicals still at the risk of ruining him forever in the estimation of right- minded people, I must say that when he went to call on his patient that day, he knew she was not at home. He saw her portly back in the window of the Yice-President's mansion as he passed a mile back. How then shall I apologize for his look of mild astonishment to find her absent, and no one but Mabel at home ? I shall not attempt to palliate his guilt, and by so doing make myself almost equally guilty. Mabel blushed when she looked up and saw the doctor, and who can wonder, for she was engaged in business, such as no heroine was ever engaged in before, I am confident. What was it ? I will tell you. When Mrs. W. left home that day, she did as she always did, left Tom employment enough to keep him from the evil effects of idleness. But upon this occasion, she went beyond even herself, and left him more work, (it was picking over beans,) than any pair of hands, however nimble, could possibly do. But he must finish it before her return or go to bed supperless, and be whipped into 'the bargain. And Tom knew by almost daily experience that Mrs. Wingate's whip- pings were not easy to endure. There were two bushels of the beans, and as poor Tom looked at the formidable pile of snowy kernels mingled liberally with stones and sticks which he was to separate like sheep from goats, the magnitude of the undertaking, and his MBS. WING ATE' S CHARITY. inability to accomplish it in time, and the dreadful consequences of his failure, all rushed over him like a wave, and he lifted up his voice and wept. Mabel was in the parlor making a shirt for him out of her own half-worn garments. She thought as she looked at Tom's bare arms swinging half out of his ragged sleeves, that this was her duty rather th in attend the Dorcas Society that day. And to tell the truth, Mrs. Wingate did not ask her to go possibly she wanted to discuss Mabel's shortcomings with her bosom friend. When Mabel heard Tom's voice rising in its dire grief, her soft little heart, which could never endure the sight of any human misery, was touched at once, and she dropped her sewing and went to his assistance. She had been there perhaps an hour, and between them the pile was rapidly lessening, arid further to the delight of Tom's soul, she was telling him a wonderful story, one of Hans Christian Andersen's. Tom's hands were busy, but he was not there in that dingy kitchen ; borne by the sweet voice, upward, outward, he had entered a fiery palace he had found the enchanted lamp he was the custodian of royal treasures. It was just at this moment, as Tom's eyes large and sparkly were raised to Mabel's face she, with her light muslin sleeves thrown back from her white dimpled arm, busy at her work smiling the rosiest of smiles upon poor Tom, entrancing him with her romancing. Just at this moment the doctor entered, and Mabel blushed as we said. And it seemed that her very coloring was infectious, for as our handsome doctor looked full into her gleaming face, a warm coloring swept up into his own. For a moment they looked in spite of their good standing in community and their unblemished reputation, like two guilty criminals, and to tell the truth, I am afraid they were guilty of theft. I am afraid they had stolen each other's hearts. As we have said, Tom and our good doctor were sworn friends, and a few words from Tom's grateful heart told 8 114 MRS. WINGATE'S CHARITY. the story. And then nothing to do, but the doctor must sit down by the table and help. Oh ! blissful kitchen walls ! Oh ! rapturous em- ployment ! The swiftly decreasing pile might have been diamonds and pearls for all the doctor and Mabel knew. Unhappy Mrs. Wingate ! tell short stories at the Dorcas Society, cut short your revelations to your bosom friend about Dr. Dean's intentions, and your fast vanish- ing lonesomeness. A weaker hand than yours has taken him captive, and is leading him. Mabel and the doctor stood by Tom faithfully till they left him with a task easy to accomplish. And then they went into the sunny parlor flooded with the western sunshine, and the rarer glow of heart light. And Mabel at the doctor's request opened the old piano that had been her mother's, and sung for him sweet English ballads, and quaint German songs, and the golden sun moved on too rapidly, as they talked of books, authors, and what not, and his eyes told that wonderful story, old, yet forever new, and Mabel's beating heart trans- lated it. This happy, happy call of the doctor's at Mrs. Wingate's was not the last, we can assure you, and Mrs. Wingate told her bosom friend at the next meeting of the Dorcas Society, " that nobody could tell only them that was in an afflicted state, how comforting it was to have Dr. Dean so neighborly ; three times that week he had been there, and each time reminded her more and more of her deceased companion." Then the Vice-President joked her openly, and said ' she guessed somebody wouldn't remain a relict long." And Mrs. Wingate smiled a very conscious smile, and said " she felt different from what she used to about folks'es marryin' the second time, and she thought Dr. Dean had mourned in a lonesome state long enough." "Just so," said the Vice-President, "his wife couldn't be any deader twenty years from now than she is now." As was only proper for such near friends, they interchanged a good many such thoughts, MRS. WING ATE '8 CHARITY. 115 and then the subject drifted round to the one that most deeply interested them at that time: the fast approaching fair. The next meeting of the Society, and the last one before the fair, was to be held at Mrs. Wingate's. All the articles must be completed, for, as Mrs. Wingate well remarked, u the money ought to be sent on before winter sets in, so the hethings could purchase their winter clothing." The ladies of the society worked hard and exclusively at their employment. Cold weather came on suddenly, and severely. And the father of the Vice-President, an old gentleman given to asthma, took to his bed through exposure to the cold. He had purchased woolen cloth for shirts, but his daughter had no time to make them,, her energies being so intent in obtaining winter clothing for the Ethiopians. The Secretary's two little boys went round with bare hands and summer pantaloons, that showed their cold red knees. They had bad colds, but their father at night gave them Hive's Syrup, and cheered them with hoarhound candy ; but with all his care, the chil- dren suffered much. The Treasurer's bed-ridden mother had a dangerous relapse, her daughter having forgotten her for nearly a whole day. On the after- noon, suddenly remembering her, she, conscience stricken, deluged her with water gruel and cream toast. But the old lady being regular in her habits, and weak, the forced abstinence told on her. But poor little Tom suffered most of all. As we said, the next meeting was to be held at Mrs. Wingate's, and it was a busy time there. For, as Mrs. Wingate told her bosom friend, " she was determined to have the best supper that had been given by any of the Society." This was not done to astonish the Society, merely, but being President, and therefore supposed to be answerable to no laws, and being abetted by the Vice-President, told her under a gentle vein of obscurity, " that when a certain man was paying attentions to a certain woman, it was only that woman's duty to invite that certain man when there was 116 MRS. WING ATE' S CHARITY. going to be doings there." Mrs. Wingate was going to invite Dr. Dean to be present at the supper, if no longer. It was the twentieth day of October, about a week before the society was to meet at Mrs. Wingate's, and the very day before the sudden change in the weather, from warm to severe cold, that Mabel was taken sick with diphtheria, so she could not assist Mrs. Wingate in her preparations, nor befriend poor Tom who went shivering around in his insufficient garments, working from morn till night, eating his scanty cold meals when he could sometimes when the fever of pre- paration ran too high, going without them driven round by his mis- tress as she would not drive a horse, for she was too careful of her property to risk the well-being of a horse with incessant labor, with- out rest, sufficient food, and warmth. Mrs. Wingate sent for Dr. Dean a day or two after Mabel was taken sick. The doctor ran his best horse as it had never been driven, for he was usually merciful to man and beast. But to his delight he found there had been no need for such hot haste. She was not so sick after all. It would probably confine her to her room several days ; but there was nothing alarming about it. Shall we say that Dr. Dean lavished his finest skill in the treatment of his beau- tiful patient ? No, we will not say so, for it is a rule with us not to make needless remarks. Shall we say that the tenderness and sym- pathy Mabel saw in her doctor's kind eyes was better than his medi- cine ? No, we will not use vain words like the heathen. It was during Dr. Dean's first visit that Mrs. Wingate, in her evi- dent admiration for him, said : " As I was a telling you, doctor, I want you to do everything you can for her; come every day if it is necessary or twice a day. I shan't begrudge the money. Her poor deceased father left the whole of his property to me, during my life, as is well known, for it made lots of talk at the time, as you well remember. Lots of folks being MRS. WINQATE'S CHARITY. 117 mean enough to say that I coaxed him up and took the advantage of him, to get him to will it to me. But there haint a word of truth in it as can be proved, for he was alone in the room with the lawyer when he made his will ; how could I take the advantage of him, and coax him up when 1 wasn't there ? But as I was a saying, for all he left all of his property to me, one farm jining GIVING HIM POINTS. your place, as you know, your paster being on one side of the fence, and mine on the 'other, and as I was savin' to the Yice-President the other day, says I, Harriet, if that fence was only throwed down, there wouldn't be a paster equal to it in the country. But as I was a sayin' to you, for all Mabel is dependent on me for everything as long as I live, I want you to do well by her, and I am willin', and more than willin' that you should 118 MRS. WINOATSTS CHARITY. come every day ; mebbe you wont have a chance to see me always." Here a look of warm relief came into the doctor's handsome face. But Mrs. Wingate did not observe it, and went on : " I am so took up a working for the good of the hethings. The next meeting is to be held here, and I want you to come, so I said to my friend, the Vice-President, says I, Harriet, if I am turned out of the Society the next minute, I am going to invite Dr. Dean. Says I, Harriet, what first drawed me towards that man, a religious drawin' of course, was when I heard folks a telling what a hand he was to do good to his fellow creatures. 1 felt that here was a congenial soul that would sympathize with me in my yearning of spirit over the hething. Says I, Harriet, it makes me love the hethings better to think he loves 'em so well. And oh ! my dear doctor, what a blessed work that is. Nobody knows how I feel for them benighted souls that know not the language of prayer, and know not what good clothing is. Nobody knows the tears I shed for 'em when every body thinks I am asleep. Seven bed-quilts have we pieced up this summer for them, besides another cut out, and my table at the fair will be perfectly loaded with things I have made myself. Of course you will be to the fair, and you must be sure to come to the next society meeting." Here, through the inexorable necessity for breath to carry on the breathing apparatus, Mrs. Wingate was obliged to stop for a moment, and the doctor, seizing the opportunity, succeeded in taking his im- mediate departure. As he passed out into the highway, and was unfastening his horse that was rather restless in the keen frosty air, little Tom passed him. His thin, pale face, blue with cold, looked pinched and worn, and oh ! so very cold. His clothing was far better for July than November, and his boots which had formerly been the property of Mr. Wingate, were still not large enough to conceal his suffering stocking- 119 MRS. WING ATE 'S CHARITY. less feet. He had a large load 1 of rough scraggly wood in his arms, apple boughs and limbs cut with much labor into the requisite length, his long, bony, bare wrists showing to forlorn advantage, clasping his rugged burden. The doctor spoke cheer- ily to the little man, it was a way of his, and poor cold little Tom almost thought the air grew warmer beneath the kindly light of the gray eyes. " You are at work busy as over this cold day, I see, Tom." " Yes, sir ; Mrs. Wingit wanted it brung in, and I'm a bringin' on it." " Haven't you plenty of wood in the wood-house ? " " Yes, sir ; but she wanted it chopped up out of the way, and I'm a choppin' of it. Tough- er'n fury to cut, but I'd rather cut it than bring it in, I know I had. It is a long ways to bring it hands get cold, and it makes my back ache." " There will be brighter days for you Tom." How to bring these " brighter days," the good doctor did not 120 MR& WING ATE' 8 CHARITY. know, for Tom was legally bound to Mrs. Wingate, and as for com- plaining of inhumanity in the President of the Dorcas Society for the relief of the heathens perish the irreverent thought. But still the doctor repeated the words that might give some comfort to the heart that so sorely needed comfort, adding : " Don't you know I have always told you so ; your turn will come some day ; it is a long lane that never turns ; don't you know I have always told you so, Tom ? " "Yes'ir." " But at the present time, your hands ache, don't they ? " " Yes'ir." Tom had rested his hands up against the fence while he was talking with the doctor, and he looked down now with a sort of pitying expres- sion upon the little bare red extremities. " Miss Mabel said she'd make me some mittens out of broadcloth, she's got a piece. She'll make 'em I guess when she gets well enough. She's goin' to get well, ain't she ? " And Tom looked wish- fully up into the doctor's face. " Yes, she will get well, I think. So she is going to make you a pair of mittens ? " " Yes, sir ; she said she'd gimme some. Awfully hope she'll get well ; it's lonesomer'ii fury without her. She's gooder'n anything you ever see ; stands jawin' first rate. Mrs. Wingit jaws her awfully some- times helps me lots. Mends up my clothes some when she is well. They are tored out agin now." And Tom looked down ruefully upon his bare knees. " Well, as she isn't well enough to make your mittens, and it is so cold, suppose you take these." And Dr. Dean pulled off his warm fur-lined gloves, and laid them on Tom's hands ; and before grateful Tom could scarcely say a word of thanks he sprang into his buggy and drove off. MRS. WING ATE* 8 CHARITY. 121 Tom put on the warm gloves, wondering at their warmth, their softness, and went toward the house with a lighter step. Not so very light, however, for of late Tom had found it hard work to drag about ; he seemed to have but little strength. Mrs. Wingate called it lazi- ness. The meeting at Mrs. Wingate's was pronounced a success. Her supper far surpassed anything that had been known in the annals of the Dorcas. But when did the blossom of perfect happiness ever spring from earthly soil ? In Mrs. Wingate's heart an arrow rankled. Dr. Dean could not attend ; business unfortunately demanded his attend- ance elsewhere. So he had told Mrs. Wingate the morning of the party, when he left after a long call upon Mabel. " It was aggravating." So the President told the Vice-President in confidence, on a lounge behind her bedroom door. "Harriet, it is aggravating. And there I sent Tom to the village after dark in the snow and rain for some vanilla for the ice cream, having happened to hear the doctor say he preferred it to any other seasoning. Tom made a great fuss about going said he was sick; but I wouldn't hear a word to it. I wont countenance complaining. I thought my soul that he never would come back. Of course he went afoot. I wouldn't take a horse out in the storm ; and he just moped along like a snail. It pro- voked me so that I put him to bed without his supper." " Good enough for him," said the Vice-President. " But where is he ? I haven't seen him to-day." "No, he has laid round all day. 1 haven't got enough out of him to-day to pay for his salt. But he has got to stir his stumps now, for some woolen yarn has got to be had to finish the mittens, and some pink calico to finish the bed-quilt ; and Tom has got to go, or I'll tell him the reason why." He pleaded hard against going to the village; but Mrs. Wingate was inexorable. The fair was to be the next week. No time could be 122 MBS. WING ATE' S CHAHITY. wasted, for the good of the heath- en was at stake. So out into the cold went little Tom, and drag- ged his heavy limbs that weary two miles. The chilly wind tore at his ragged clothing as if it had a special spite against him, and was determined to undress him entirely. The snow fell up- on his cold, thin face, and found no warmth there to melt it, and every icy blast pierced his chest like a knife, for Tom had taken a very bad cold, settling upon his lungs. Having delivered the calico and woolen yarn into the hands of Mrs. Wingate, he fell, rather than sat, into a chair by the kitchen stove, and finally crept up the attic stairs, and cowered down under his scanty bed clothing. Happily, Tom's yarn and cloth came just in time to pre- vent a half-hour's cessation of labor for the heathen. Then fingers flew. Let the naked Ethiopians rejoice. What though he be wretched now, lying upon his bed of palm leaves, and pull- ing tropic flowers with bare hands ? Rejoice, unhappy brothers ; for MRS. WINGATE'S CHARITY. 123 warm hearts arc beating for you, bedquilts are being pieced for you, woolen mittens are being knitted by tender, womanly fingers. Their fingers flew and their tongues. Many pitying words and desires were bestowed upon the foreign sufferers. But, alas, for the little native heathen, lying uncared for and alone, fighting for every breath he drew, " naked, athirst, and faint," in the cold attic-room above them ! Congestion Dr. Dean would have called it if he had seen Tom. But he did not see him, for when he was there in the morning to visit Mabel, the boy was cowering upon his bare bed in the attic, too glad of the rest to care much if the snow was sifting down through the broken windows, and making quite a pile at the bed head. The night of the fair was a beautiful, cold, star-lit evening. Mrs. Wingate went to the hall where it was to be held early in the morning, and left it not until nearly midnight or, that is, she left it for a few moments only. Towards sunset she went home with the Vice-President, who lived near, long enough to array herself in a gorgeous dress of orange and green plaid silk, which she had purchased with a view to the overthrow of Dr. Dean. She had, with a further design to ruin his peace of mind, purchased a head-dress so radiant with different colors and beauty, that she was confident it must needs bring him to her feet. In fact, all the long summer and autumn, Mrs. Wingate had looked for- ward to the scene where she was to triumph over all the single females of Dean sville, and carry off its greatest prize in the matrimonial market. We all must needs have some locality in which to rear our castles, and Mrs. Wingate had erected the airy structure of her hopes in the lighted and brilliant interior of Jefferson Hall. She thought when he saw her stand so glorious in apparel, so elevated in rank above the adjoining women, surrounded by such evidences of her liberality and philanthropy, he must, if his heart were not stone, yield to their combined fascina- tions. But, although she hurried the Vice-President as she was parting hoi- 124 MRS- WINGATE'S CHARITY. back hair and looping up her overskirt, yearning to be behind her table in full glory when he arrived, and though she walked back so fast that she was nearly breathless, and the Vice-President panted for breath, being troubled with asthma, Dr. Dean was not there. One two three four hours passed, the fair was ended, and Dr. Dean had not been there at all. Alas ! for the western castle, it is in ruins. But where was Dr. Dean, he who had never been known to absent himself from any charitable institution or meeting whatever? We will tell you. Mabel, although a great deal better almost well, in fact did not attend the fair. For the past two days, ever since she had left her room, she had given all her time and strength to poor little Tom, and the day of the fair he was much worse. But he was very patient. All his life he had had his real needs too much neglected to be fanciful and hard to suit. Everything that Mabel did for him was just right. The food she prepared for him " was good, he knew it was," although he could not eat it. But he tried to. He would lift his little weak hands for anything she brought him, and smile his thanks with such a patient gratitude that Mabel's heart was quite wrung to behold it. She would bring him some dainty prepared by herself, and say : " This is good, Tom ; don't you believe it is ? " "Yes, mam." "Will you try to eat a little of it?" "Yes, mam." "Can't you eat one bit of it?" "No, mam." " Can't you think of anything you would like ? " "No, mam." Not once did this answer change, till the pitifulness of it and the pathos of the little worn face and his quiet patience seemed so pitiful to witness, that Mabel would have been almost glad had he shown a touch MItS. WINGATE'S CHARITY. of petulance and impatience. But he never did, and he grew worse constantly. The morning of the fair he was so much worse that Mabel proposed to send for Dr. Dean ; but Mrs. Wingate perempto- rily forbade it. "lie would be better in a day or two," she said. Possibly she did not want Dr. Dean to see what sort of a room she gave as a habitation ' -. ' : ' THE LITTLE SUFFERER. for an immortal soul not nearly so good a place as her stable, where she kept her sleek carriage horses. And all that day Mabel watched by him, with a thick shawl around her, and going down often to warm herself by the fire. She had brought pillows and bed-quilts from her own room, and made him as comfortable as he could be made there. But poor Tom grew de- lirious as his afternoon fever burned up more fiercely than ever. He bab- bled of many things, but most of "Mrs. Wingit's work, which he must git up to do." And then Mabel would have to hold the little thin form in the bed, for he would endeavor to arise, as he would speak of the whippings he would receive if he didn't obey her hard commands. And Mabel 126 MRS- WINGATE'S CHARITY. would soothe him into calmness, with her tender hand upon his hot forehead and her loving voice in his ear. But when his fever burned itself out and left him, he frightened Mabel with his deathly look, and she called the Irish girl, who was a kind-hearted but ignorant creature. But Mabel thought her poor companionship was better than none. The girl was so frightened that she said she would go for the doctor at once ; and Mabel told her she might go for him and for Mrs. Wingate. As the girl started out of the door she saw a boy on his way to the fair, and she sent word by him that Tom was worse, and Mabel wanted her to come home. But Mrs. Wingate refused to come. She was just then on her way home with Harriet to don the gorgeous apparel with which to vanquish Dr. Dean. Could she give up the scene of triumph she had pictured to herself so many times for the sake of a poor pauper ? No. She refused to go. Dr. Dean went, however ; and with his first look at Tom's face he knew the truth. The boy was dying ; but as the doctor, who had been one of the very few who had always spoken kindly to him, bent over his bed, Tom looked up and smiled, and seemed to remember some of those kind words ; for he said to him in such a poor, weak voice that they both had to bend their heads very low to hear him : "I said 1 wished I was a hething, and you " Here his voice quite failed him, and he stopped a minute ; but pretty soon he went on, "And you said there was brighter days for me." " There are, Tom. God knows I believe it ; and you are very near them now." " You said you said, " Again he paused for a moment. "You said it was a long lane that never turned, and I guess I'm most to the endin' of it." " Yes, Tom ; and I believe a kinder friend than you have ever known on earth is waiting to lead you into that brighter pathway so near you." And here the doctor's voice was very low and gentle. MRS. WING ATE 1 S CHARITY. 127 " Will you ask that Good Friend for His love, for His love to go with you, Tom? Do you know the prayer, 'Our Father who art in Heaven?'" "No; nobody ever teached me. But I guess " Here his voice died entirely out ; but, as he brightened up a moment after, he tried again to finish the sentence the last speech he ever gave to a gainsay- ing world, that had thought so very little of poor Tom's remarks : " I guess He'll know that I never had nobody to tell me " The sentence was never finished here ; but I trust it was heard and received due attention from Him, in whose gracious sight a sparrow does not fall unnoticed. When Mrs. Wingate returned from the fair for the welfare of the heathen, Tom was not there only the poor robe he had cast aside for- ever. The immortal spirit, that had been intrusted to her care, had gone to carry the message of how she had used that trust to the throne of God. But Tom's labor is ended now, and he sleeps very peacefully beneath the small white stone Mabel Dean placed above his grave. It was just after Mabel's marriage, which took place about two months after Tom's death, that Mrs. Wingate, disgusted, resigned her position as President of the Female Dorcas Society. FAITTI WINSLOW. VERY-ONE wondered where Faith Window got her eyes. Not from Pa or Ma Winslow. He had small orbs, of a pale, watery blue, and hers were round, shining spheres of black, very like a doll's. No, not from either of these did Faith inherit those large, beautiful eyes. I fancy some ancestor of hers no matter how many centuries back had a wonderful poet or artist soul, and baffled, yearning, went down to the grave unsatisfied with life, and so his soul, not resting, looked out on the world again from the eyes of Faith Winslow. They were seeking eyes, eyes that were always asking something, wonderful, appealing eyes. Sweet eyes, seeking for something beau- tiful. What did they find in the old farm-house to satisfy them ? In the best room there was a striped rag carpet, six yellow flag- bottomed chairs, embellished at the back with an impossible rose with blue petals, such as never haunted a sane horticulturist's wildest dreams. A table, with a brown linen table-spread, of Ma Winslow's own weaving, on it, on which was a small dictionary, an almanac, a Bible, and a Methodist hymn-book. A mantel, with two shining brass candlesticks, separated by a snuffer-tray. Four stiff, green paper cur- 9 (129) 130 FAITH WINSLOW. tains at the windows. And on the spotless walls a certificate, framed, bearing witness to her parents' lawful marriage. And a mourning piece, a woman clasping a very mature child to her elaborately- trimmed breast, and both shedding very large-sized tears on a monu- ment. That was all. Then there was the spare bed-room, with a marvelously high feather-bed on it. A kitchen, with a bed-room adjoining it, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow nightly slept the sleep of the just. And two chambers above, in one of which Faith dreamed her wonderful dreams ; and in the other, John Grey, the hired boy, burned his nightly candle in the search of knowledge. Only a farmer's son r hired to a farmer, but you would find on the little stand at the head of his bed elementary books in Greek and Latin among the pile of other school-books. The .education he had received at the district school had only fired his love for, and determination to obtain, an education. And the flame burned silently, and grew with what it fed upon. It was a lovely evening in early May, and Faith and John Grey were sitting on the porch amidst the budding lilacs and sweet-briar roses. She is cutting carpet rags, but her fingers are rather idle, so her mother thinks, looking at her over her spectacles from the window, where she sits making a cheese bandage. " I declare, Faith, when do you think you will ever get that ball done at that rate ? and there are forty pounds to cut before spinning comes on. Now, when I was your age " And then followed a long recital of the days' work she used to turn off wonderful successes of skeins of yarn, and yards of weaving. Faith's eyes were bent earnestly on her mother's face as she talked, and her mother thought her greatly impressed by her conver- sation. That good lady, not being a soul linguist, could not translate the pathetic, wistful language of the soft eyes lifted to hers. Had she understood it, she would have read Faith's questioning whether life FAITH WINSLOW. were really worth having that held nothing but this endless drudgery, this treadmill-round of wearisome toil. Her mother bustled off to the dairy-room with her cheese band- age, and Faith took up her work again with a long sigh. John heard it, indeed, an observant person could hardly be in their society for five minutes without knowing that John Grey did see and hear everything relating to Faith Winslow. He looked up quickly from his work, it was a harness he was mending with deft, brown fingers. But Faith did not look at him. Her large eyes were bent upon the West, whose glowing sunset light was being fast hidden from her by the towering mountain range that shut in the valley. What was- in that great, wonderful, beautiful world that lay beyond ? How nar- row and barren the life about her seemed to her to-night! Must her whole life be passed in farm drudgery, in the exercise of mere brute strength ? Must her highest aim and enjoyment be the doing of an extra hard day's work of spinning, cutting carpet rags, or piecing calico bed-quilts ? She looked about her, at the little farm-house that brightened the valley. Their inmates all seemed content, happy. Why should she be so different from them all, so restless, discontented ? Faith was not aware of it; so very humble was she and self-distrustful, she did not know in what consisted that strange barrier felt, but scarcely recog- nized, separating her so entirely from those about her. % In the first place it was her beautiful nature, and then she had separated herself still farther from her surroundings by her superior culture. An aunt, half-sister to her mother, the child of a later and wealthier marriage, had spent one summer at the farm-house when Faith was thirteen, three years before our story commences. And to Faith's dreamy, imaginative mind the three months that this ele- gant, cultured woman was in her home was Paradise. 132 FAITH WINSLOW. This aunt possessed a nature kindred to Faith's, and she saw with delight the young girl's growing desire for knowledge, and taught her while she was there, leaving her books to study and read when she was gone. Oh, what a new world of beauty and delight she caught glimpses of during that enchanted season ! But the aunt had seemed to pass utterly from her life, for she had married a very wealthy man two years before, and was living in the south of France, her husband being- ordered there by his physicians for the benefit of his health. And Faith thought her aunt had forgotten her. Poor Faith, sitting on the porch! Lower and lower the sun sank, deeper and darker the shadows of the green old mountain stretched toward her. Would she ever surmount the higher mountains that separated her from the unknown world of beauty, culture ? Faith did not note the clear, grey eyes that were watching her so intently. But she spoke out, with another deep sigh : " How dark it seems here, John ! " " Yes ; the mountain shuts out the sunset quickly." " If I were a man, I would follow that light outward. I wonder you can be content here, John. If I were a man, I would never stay here, I would " " You would walk through the mountain ? " John said this in a light tone, but with rather of a sad heart, to think the one he worshiped so entirely seemed so willing to have him leave her. A desert would be delightful to him, if Faith Wins- low was there. But he went on, simply : " You know my father was indebted to yours ; and your father wanted my work, so I came." "When you wanted to go to school so, it is too bad, John." " Oh, no," said John, cheerfully ; " school can wait for awhile ; I am only eighteen, and I am studying, too, all the time." FAITH WINSLOW. 133 John did not make himself out a martyr. He thought he was simply doing his duty. That was a very strongly-marked trait in John Grey's nature a loyal desire to do the first and nearest duty that presented itself to him. To do all things faithfully, earnestly, as in the sight of the Lord. He was not a believer in fate at all ; he relied upon God and his own right hand, and he was willing to toil valiantly. John, too, was looking now at the great, grim giant that seemed to delight to tower up and hide all the glory of the western sky, and there was a light in his grey eyes that made his earnest face handsome. " One step at a time will take one over the mountain ; I shall find a way." " I know you will. The world has need of just such good, patient workers as you are, John. I wish I were half as good as you, as contented and cheerful.'* John's face flushed. " Oh, it is different with you, Faith. It never seems as if any- thing is half good enough for you. You are so dainty, so different from anyone else." Poor John, his face was growing so very red, and his fast-beating heart made the words so very difficult to speak. But at that moment was heard a loud, decided knocking at the front door, and Faith ran away to open it. " Could you kindly direct me to Farmer Ford's ? " Faith answered him, looking up shyly into the tender, smiling, passionate eyes. For they were eyes that could put on every soulful emotion to entrance a little beauty of a country girl, as well as to beguile a royal duchess. And in fact as Clancy March looked down into those large, wonderful eyes, he thought he had never in his life beheld so rare and perfect a type of beauty. He was told that Farmer Ford might take a boarder for the 134 FAITH WINSLOW. summer. He was rather out of health, and wanted a quiet place where he could have plenty of quiet, out-door exercise and pure air. Perhaps he could obtain board here, if so he would look no further. THE INQUIRY. Faith ushered him into the parlor. Farmer Winslow was called. That good old gentleman was in a very bad humor. Six lengths of fence had just been broken down "by them infernal cattle of Neighbor Ford's." FAITH WINSLOW. 135 When Faith told him the gentleman's business, he said: "Til be shot if I have him in the house five minutes." But he little understood the fascinations and power of Clancy March. In half an hour it was all settled, and the young man became an inmate of the old brown homestead. Oh, those long summer months, Eden hours so sweet so bitter sweet to the tender, impulsive heart of Faith Winslow ! All she had dreamed of in her ideal world, of art, culture, beauty, he realized to her. What poems he read to her in the shady old porch ; what sweet love songs he sang to her in the twilight shadows ; what more wondrous idyls of love and tenderness she could read in his admiring glances. Did Clancy March know just how dear he was becoming to her ? Yes, I think he knew it fully. He was one who delighted in his power of winning love and admiration. And Faith why he had never, never met, in all his going to and fro about the earth, just such a sweet, original little beauty as Faith Winslow. In fact, she touched the heart of Clancy March as no woman had ever done this little rustic maiden. He thought of it often upon his pillow in the spare bed-room of the Winslow farmhouse. Not in the night watches. No, he slept well and soundly. But just after he would lay his head upon his pillow, after spending the short, beautiful summer evening reading to her. With those wonderful eyes bent with a woman's appreciation and a child's trust and innocence upon his face. " If she were only rich now ; but he couldn't afford to throw away his future for the sake of this little country girl. He should get over this fancy, he always did. There was that Italian girl Beatrice; lie had fancied himself in love with her that winter in Florence. And then there was Madame Le Noir, that young French widow, and American girls dating back to the daughter of his nurse. Of course, 136 FAITH WINbLOW. there were none of these like Faith ; there was a soul, a depth to her nature, a spirituality to her loveliness, that none of these had possessed. But then, he should get over it." And he would fall asleep so quickly after settling this important fact in his mind that he had really no time to think whether Faith would " get over it " as easily. For he could not fail to see how entirely she was giving up her heart her very life, into his hands. And so the long, sweet summer hours passed away, and it was the last night of his stay at the old farmhouse. Faith was sitting on the low parlor doorstep, he leaning against the rough pillar that supported the vine-shaded portico, looking down upon her. " I shall miss my little companion very much. The city will seem dull and empty to me without you, Faith." She looked up into his face. He saw it all, all those eyes held ; such sorrow, such a passionate, loving reverence for him, for I verily believe had he asked her at that time to give up her life for him, she would have lain it down gladly. I think he read it all, but he only said, as he stepped down and laid his hand lightly on her forehead : "What are you going to do with all this brain when I am gone ?" She did not answer him, for she could not. She turned her head, but he could see tears drop silently down upon her clasped hands. He saw them, and they touched his heart as I think it had never been touched in his whole life before. But he had sufficient manliness not to show that he noticed them, and he went on speaking rapidly : " I wish I dare tell you, Faith, how bitter this parting is to me. If it were in my power, I would never leave my little girl here, if she would go with me. But I am not worthy of you. Some better man than I am will win your love, and then you will forget me, and I, far away from you, shall try to forget you and cannot." FAITH WINSLOW. 137 Words said only to free himself from rather an embarrassing position, but which were to prove truer than he thought. For, in the years that came after, how often did those beautiful eyes rise before him, with all the wondrous meaning they held. When lie was deceived in what he most trusted, when he lost faith in all humanity, and thought there was no such thing as disinterested love upon earth, then he thought of the boundless faith in him those sweet eyes expressed ; then he thought of the soul of love, faithful, almost worshipful devotion, that he left there in the porch of the old homestead. Yes, left. For even as he looked down upon Faith, with his selfish, worldly heart beating faster than it ever had before, he thought : " I can never sacrifice my future for the sake of a little country girl. There is Miss Wallingford with her hundred thousand. To be sure she was rather faded, and her eyes were very pale and colorless, but her diamonds had expression and sparkle. No, he couldn't sacrifice his future." " Faith," and he turned to the still, white little figure at his side, " I want you to keep ' Elaine,' that little illustrated volume, you know, that you fancied so. I will leave it on the table of my room, for we shall not meet in the morning, I leave so early. I want you to keep it always, for my sake. Do you remember that little song in it ? They seem to me the saddest, truest words in the whole world." And then, looking down upon the fair, pale face, he repeated, and he felt them deeply enough to add a passion and tenderness of his own to the mournful sweetness of the song: "Sweet is true love, though given in vain, in vain, And sweet is death, who puts an end to pain; I know not which is sweeter no, not I. "Love, art thou sweet? then bitter death must be. Love, art thou bitter ? welcome death to me. Oh, love, if death be sweeter, let me die. 138 FAITH WINS LOW. ' ' Sweet love, that seems not made to fade away. Sweet death, that seems to make us loveless clay; I know not which is sweeter no, not I." " Do you remember them, Faith ? I read them to you that day in the boat." " Yes, I remember them. Good-bye, Mr. March ! " She had risen, and stood pale as death, but calm and quiet as she had never been in all her past the perfect, pathetic calm of despair. He took the hand she held out in both his own, and then he stooped down. " We are such good friends, you might let me kiss you once for the first and last time, Faith." But she drew her face away with a gesture almost of abhorrence. "Stay one moment, Faith, I want to tell you " But she was gone through the hall, the kitchen ; he heard her footsteps ; then he heard the chamber door shut, and he was indeed alone, save for a memory that would always go with him where he went. Blinded, dizzy, stumbling, Faith started to climb the stairs. She was not given to fainting, but after shutting the chamber door, and thinking how very steep and straight the staircase was, she remembered nothing further till she found herself on the lounge in her own room, and John Grey bending over her. "I thought I wouldn't call your mother, Faith. I was afraid it would frighten her. You are tired out ; you have worked too hard, Faith." If Faith had looked up into John Grey's face, she might have read the true reason why he had not called her mother ; why he had shielded her from all troublesome notice and inquiries. I am afraid that John good Christian youth as he was was cursing Clancy FAITH WINSLOW. 189 March for a villain in his inmost heart. For he well knew what it was that was tiring Faith. But Faith did not look up; she only said, "Yes, I am tired, John tired out." "Well, you shall rest now; I can help your mother. I can work in-doors as well as out, you know." "YES, I AM TIRED, JOHN." " Yes, I know just how good you are, John." She raised herself wearily from the lounge. And John Grey, suddenly recollecting that he was in Faith's room, gave a revon-nt. awe-struck look about him, and went softly out. He paused, however, at the door. "There isn't anything I can do for you, Faith?" 140 FAITH WINSLOW. " Xo, John ; nothing." What of the days that passed after Clancy March had left the old homestead ? At first she thought the world had come to an end. Then there were the long days and nights of dull, dreary pain, and longing, and despair. And then came a strength and a patience wrought out of suffering. Clancy March did not harm Faith. Indeed, I am fully persuaded that no power upon earth can harm people unless it is their own ill-doing. At this time the most eventful in her life this aunt we have spoken of, who was now a childless widow, offered to send Faith away to school. One year ago she might have refused ; so strong are the chains of habit and blind contact ; the coarse food of Egypt might have satisfied her hunger sufficiently to keep her from the unknown wilderness. But now she hailed it welcomed it eagerly. And for the next three years Faith Winslow attended the best schools in the country. Clancy March had followed his heiress to Switzerland, where she was journeying with a gay party ; while John Grey, in a Western village, was working hard studying hard as became a penniless young lawyer. It was on an ocean steamer that Faith Winslow and Clancy March met again. He had not married his heiress. Something some lover's quarrel had separated them shortly before the time appointed for their bridal, and he seemed not sorry to be rid of the affair, so his friends thought. Just about this time a rich bachelor uncle had died and left Clancy his heir. So he had taken life easily, or at least had made strenuous efforts to do so wandering about wherever inclination led him. But wherever he went amid Alpine snows or Southern roses one memory went with him ; and, at last, it was that very memory that led him on the Scotia, homeward-bound. One day it was the FAITH WIN SLOW. third day out, but the first upon deck, for he had been a victim to that most miserable affliction, sea-sickness Clancy March was leaning upon the railing, looking down into the ocean depths, and thinking. "Pshaw! what a fool I am!" he said, at last, emphatically to himself. " No doubt she is married years ago ; and if she is not, those eight years of rustic surroundings and seclusion on her part- and of culture and the best society on mine have separated us more widely than ever. And yet, here I am, giving up all the ease and beauty of a life abroad, just for the chance of seeing those wonderful eyes again." And then a very keen memory of just how those sweet eyes looked as he last beheld them, swept over him. " Poor little Faith." Unconsciously to himself these last words were spoken aloud. And a lady just passing, on the captain's arm, looked full into his face, for one brief moment, and then passed on. She did not recognize him evidently, but he knew her at once. There could never be two pair of such eyes in the whole world glowing, tender, fathomless. Those were the eyes that he had dreamed of by night and by day. As the captain returned from the ladies' cabin, whither he had escorted his passenger, Clancy sought him he was an old friend of his. " Who was that lady with you a moment since ? " "That! oh, that was Miss Winslow, the beauty, the heiress. Where had he been not to have heard of her? She had been the belle the rage at Florence, Rome, Paris, for the past year." "Mr. March had been in Germany for the past year. Where was the lady's home?" " In Washington ; but the aunt who had adopted her, and left her her heiress, had died there, and she had been abroad with an old friend of her aunt's. Did he want to be presented ? " " Yes, that evenint Cecil's little crib, and take him in my arms, and tell him stories in a low voice. And I can see now just how large and sorrowful his eyes looked up at me from his little white pillow as I went in, and how they 174 CECIL VAIL. lit up during the wonderful adventures of Alibaba, and how pretty lie looked as he lay asleep at last, with a smile on his lips ; and how many times I kissed him, but softly, that I might not awaken him. About my father, at this time, there was a mystery. He would remain for days shut up in his room; and then we dared not, for our lives, go near it. And when we would question our step-mother, why we mustn't go into his room, and why he shut himself up so, she would frown upon us darkly, and bid us " ask her no questions." Sometimes, when she was in a softer mood, she would add, " Poor creeters, what would become of you, if it wasn't for me ? " which would plunge me, too, in the same long train of inquiry, and gloomy reflections. My very first memory of seeing him, was, (and I must have been very young,) I remember, thinking how very handsome he was. I know now, that I had been away, staying with an aunt in the city, and I have a faint recollection of papa's taking me into a darkened room, where there was a lady with a white, beautiful face, and eyes like Cecil's, and her kissing me, and weeping over me, and calling me " her pretty darling." CECIL VAIL. 175 There were some white lilies in a vase near the couch whciv she was lying, and though I cannot recollect anything else there was in the room, or how I got there, or where I went from there though now I know that I went home again witli my aunt still, I never see a white lily, but I am carried back into the dream again of the palo lady, and papa's handsome face as he led me in. Another dream stands out faintly against the misty obscurity of that last time. It must have been the night before I returned home to stay. I awoke on a sofa in my aunt's room, and she was talking about me. " Poor little Nora," she was saying, " how sorry I am to leave her ; but India is no place for a child." " No ; and with your health, too, the child will be better off at home." u But such a home," the plaintive voice went on. " How could he ever choose such a woman, his housekeeper, to take the place of our poor lost Edith ? It is a mystery I never can understand." " No one ought to understand it," said my uncle in wrathful accents. " But one thing is certain ; Harold is sinking lower and lower into ruin every day." "I know it my poor brother!" And here my aunt began to weep, while my uncle, with many loving words, tried to comfort her. As for me, I lay silently brooding over the thoughts their words awakened. I knew they were speaking of my father, for his name was Harold. What was this dreadful place called " ruin " into which he was sinking, so terrible a place that my aunt wept to think of his entering it ? Life again seems a misty dream, and I find myself at home, lov- ing my pretty brother better than anything else, and still haunted by a vague horror and curiosity concerning the ruin connected with my father's name. 176 CECIL VAIL. With my first clear and distinct recollections of my father, comes the knowledge that he disliked and avoided me. At first, only the dreamy knowledge of the fact was apparent to my childish apprehen- sion, and it was not until long after I became aware what the word " ruin " meant in connection with him, that the reason of his dislike mid avoidance became apparent to me. And I thought I was to him, like a visible conscience, and the eyes of my own mother, whom I greatly resembled, looking through mine, reproached him, agonized him with the memory of what he was once, what he might have been, and the wreck he had become now. But it ended. There was a body found in the snow a night of horror unspeakable a day of confusion, with a mystery lying in the darkened parlor a funeral a grave into which the falling snow sifted, covering it softly with its pure whiteness. And looking back into that grave now, my only comfort is that God's mercy is whiter than the snow. There was enough saved for us out of what had been a hand- some fortune, to provide us food and clothing, and a home such as it was. But we were the children of a drunkard the village children never let us forget that. And one of the bitterest memories of my childhood is seeing Cecil's sensitive lips quiver at their taunting words. I could endure reproach and upbraiding myself, but Cecil I can- not remember the time that I did not hold his well-being and happiness dearer than my own, and why should I not ? For he loved me, and he was all in the world I had to love. And I had a loving heart ; many, many faults it had, but it was a loving heart, I know. And it seemed as if my affections, blown away from every other support to which they had tried to cling, all, all twined about Cecil, my brother my darling. On my tenth birthday, an old lady, my step-mother's mother, came CECIL VAIL. 177 to live with us. I remember it was my birthday, for Cecil asked my step-mother in the morning, "if she wasn't going to bake Nora a birthday cake, as Kitty Snow's mother did?" And how well I recollect her reply : " That she guessed Nora would find that birthdays would come often enough, and bring her trouble enough, without coaxin' 'em along with sweet cakes." And how well I remember what a horror of birthdays fell ui)on me then. Mrs. Dagget, the old lady, came while we were talking about this. She was a queer looking little old lady, with a yellow, wrinkled face, and a broad, white border standing out around it. Her first words to us were : "I suppose you make your mother an awful sight of work, - don't they Melissa ? " Melissa replied with a great deal of feeling and earnestness, that we did. And then Mrs. Dagget remarked with a groan, that she supposed she should be another trouble to her, but she shouldn't be long, for she couldn't stand it but a few days, "feelin"' as she did then, " so run down, and gone to the stummuck." And then noticing Cecil's red cheeks, she asked if they wa-n't caused by " inwerd fever;" she had lost a child just about his age, and that looked a good deal like him, with "inwerd fever," and lie \\as "buried up in the cold ground." 12 MRS. DAGGETT. 178 CECIL VAIL. Which made me shudder, and cling to Cecil's hand more closely. And then regarding my rather shabby gown, she asked her daughter if she supposed one of her old dresses could be fixed over for me? But Melissa could do as she was "a mind to with 'em;" they would all fall to her before long, if there kept up such a goneness at her "stummuck." This was our first introduction to the old lady, and I do not think that in after days she ever contributed any more to our cheer- fulness and happiness than at that first interview. Although, some- times, with the good feeling that had actuated her in bequeathing her gown to me, she would call Cecil and myself to her side on the Sab- bath, and read the Bible to us. But she would always select the chapters in which Israel was doomed, or Job bewailed, or the prophets lamented ; and this, together with the fact that she was obliged to stop and spell nearly all of the larger words, detracted much from our enjoyment. It seemed as if the harder the words were, and the more diffi- cult for her to manage, the more she delighted in them. There was one chapter which she oftenest selected ; it was concerning the Israel- ites journeying through Aroer, which she always called A Roarer, and their encounter with the Horims, which, after spelling many times, she persisted in calling Homers. And I distinctly remember thinking they were strange monsters, half-men and half-beasts, with horns grow- ing out of their foreheads. Cecil and I differing in our views as we talked it over afterward, he, full of a boy's martial instincts, thinking the Homers were connected with a brass band. But this chapter always gave her special delight, although there was not a name in it which was not too much for her, and which did not cause her scholarly overthrow. At the foot of the old lady's bed stood a hair trunk, so worn, that it looked like a very old dog, that had been scalded, but still (JE(JIL VAIL. 179 remained faithful to its mistress, guarding the foot of her bed. And sometimes when we had specially pleased her, she would go to this trunk and take out a musty, leather-bound copy of Fox's Book of Martyrs, and show us the pictures. On such nights, I would always have to go and lie down by Cecil till he went to sleep. Many odd questions would he ask me concerning the martyrs, when a sleepiness THE " SWEKT STONY OK OLD." overcame him he would confound with the dwellers in the wilder- ness, and in the odd vagaries of dreams, he would call out that a Homer was after him with a red-hot gridiron. It was not till many years after, that I learned what the Bible, which to Cecil and me was full of terror and weariness, might be to 180 CECIL VAIL. children. I heard a mother reading to her happy little flock about the child Samuel, the infant Jesus in his mother's human, loving- arms, and the divine Saviour, who lived and blest little children. And as their eyes brightened and grew reverent as she read, though it was so long past and gone, tears sprang to my eyes under a vague sense of loss, and of wrong that had been done to my youth. If any remembrance of my childhood comes to me pleasantly, if I look back upon that time, which should be full of joyful memories, with one emotion of tenderness and delight, that remembrance is of Cecil. All the joy of our gloomy home he brought into it. Mother softened her rather harsh tones to him, and in his sunshiny presence the groans of Mrs. Dagget seemed to be less profound, and partake more of the pensive nature of sighs. So life ran along till Cecil was seventeen, and I was twenty, and loving him as I did, I don't know whether I was most glad or sorry when news came from our rich uncle in Boston, offering him a place in his counting-room. This uncle, Reginald Tail, was still quite young, unmarried, and very wealthy. And Cecil was delighted to go, for he thought that would be the road to independence, to the home I was to share ; for in all his hopeful, loving plans for the future, I was included. Whatever regret I felt was all smothered in my own breast, for I, too, thought that it was an opening into the grand future I had always pictured for my darling. So he went, hopeful and happy, and how did I know he had gone into temptation ? Cecil left us in the autumn, and it seemed, that long, long winter, that I should have died, had it not been for his long, bright, loving letters, which I got two or three times a week. Mrs. Dagget used to groan over the frequency of the letters, and the expense it involved ; and my step-mother, a little jealous, I am afraid, of the affection he showed so plainly for me, (although he never forgot to send her some kind message,) would darkly prophesy that she might slave CECIL VAIL. 181 herself to death for some folks, and that was all the thanks she would get. And Mrs. Dagget would add, with a groan : " I shan't be here long, to see it go on." What the " it " was to which she referred, she never told, but constantly did she call our attention to the fact that "it was'goin* on," and in a reproachful demeanor toward me, she intimated that I was responsible for " its goin' on/' There were days when her very clothing seemed to upbraid me; her cap-strings flouted mournfully, her apron-strings hung down reproachfully and rebukingly, and seemed mutely to ask me, more in a spirit of sorrow than anger, " are you not the cause of its goin' on ? " But this was in her better-natured moods. There were times when her cap-border reviled me, her apron-strings menaced me. In these times her doom was prophesied, not as a drooping oracle, but as an avenger. "Then you will see what I have went through, with this goneness at the stummuck, when I am a layin' in the cold, cold ground. Mebby you will have a realizin' sense of what you have lost, mebby you will have reflections." I think now, that it was a hereditary trait in the Dagget family to foretell their approaching dissolution, although my step-mother's doom was always foretold to us by her, as being caused by her labor for us. We did not keep any servant, but our work was light, and I was more than willing to do my share of it ; but I am certain that very trw days passed, and no washing, or baking, or sweeping day, without her talking a great deal, and prophesying that she should kill her- self, just as sure as she was alive then, working and slaving for us that day. And then she would often add, with an upbraiding glance at me, as if I were the main cause of her doom, that then she should be 182 CECIL VAIL. out of the way, and she supposed I would be glad of it, much as she had always done for me. I would assure her often, with tears in my eyes, that she did me an injustice, that I knew very well how much she had done for us, and that I was willing, and wanted to assist and help her all I could, if she would only let me, and I would beg of her not to speak in that way. Sometimes my distressful tone would seem to touch her, for she would say in a softer and more melancholy manner : She guessed it would be better if she was out of the way, and mother, too. And Mrs. Dagget never failed to add the melancholy prediction, that "I shan't be here long, to see it go on, for my stummuck feels goner and goner every day." I suppose it was because I was foolishly sensitive, that I felt all this so deeply, and it made me so unhappy. But one cannot change their nature, and I don't really know how I could help it that while a smile or a pleasant word would make me happy for a day, a frown or a reproachful word would cut to my heart like a knife. It is with an odd feeling of pity for myself that I look back, and remember how miserable and lonely their words would make me through the long, long days. How my heart would sink down so low that it seemed as if it would never be lighter again ; yet it always was when I got a letter from Cecil. As I said, it seemed as if I lived upon his letters ; but with the coming of spring, an ambition awoke within me. I had been think- ing, ever since Cecil went away, how delightful it would be if I could earn something to give him when he went into business for himself. What a help a few hundred dollars would be! I pondered many impossible plans, and finally I thought of teaching school, and I applied by letter for a school about thirty miles away. A lady who was visiting one of our neighbors, happened to mention it in my CECIL VAIL. 183 presence, that the school teacher at Randolph, who had taught there for years, had died, and no one had been found to fill her place. To one of my timid nature, the idea of going out into the great world alone, was full of terror. But it was for Cecil, and that made it endurable. There is no task-master like love, and there is no such willing slavery. I was not needed at home, and I would at least make the effort. I thought I would say nothing to anyone about it until I was certain I could have the school, and one cold, rainy even- ing in April my fate came to me. I well recollect what a cold drizzling rain was falling outside, and how a colder, more depressing atmosphere seemed to enwrap us indoors, as we sat at the tea-table. I could not eat much, for it seemed as if I had never been so homesick for Cecil as I had been all day; and at the table, his empty place, opposite, intensified this feeling, so it was with difficulty that I kept back my tears. There was not much conversation at the table. Only Mrs. Dagget, who had been watching the dismal fall of the rain against the win- dows, more dismal in the growing gray of the twilight, remarked that "It would be a bad time for a funeral." Before her daughter could reply to her, a neighbor rapped at the door, and placed a letter in my hands. It contained a favorable answer to my application for the school, and wanted me to come as soon as possible. And now, while a new and untried life was open- ing before me, I did not expect any sympathy, or encouragement, or co-operation ; but I asked my step-mother if she was willing I should go. She replied : - " I don't know as it makes much difference to me where you go, you'll probably be back on my hands before many weeks are out." Mrs. Dagget was lighting her pipe, and just at this moment a small coal of fire fell upon her apron. She raised her eyes reproach- fully to my face, and said : 184 CECIL VAIL. " Can't you put me out ? " I brushed off the coal at once, leaving no further damage than a very small hole in her gingham apron ; but she said to me, in a tone of deep rebuke : " You no need to have been so afraid of puttin' me out. Mebby you would like some of my clothes to wear off to your school teachin'. But you needn't be afraid ; they will all fall to you and Melissa before long, without your settin' of me afire, and not puttin' of me out." PUTTIN' HER OUT. So, with what encouragement and inspiration I could glean from these, and similar words, I went out into the world which seemed so large and dreadful to me. ******** In two weeks time I commenced my duties as teacher. My pupils were quite young, and they seemed to like me, and I soon became quite fond of them. And instead of its being a terrible task I had CECIL VAIL. 185 undertaken, I even began to love my work, and I spent many happy hours in the little white school-house, nestling in rural quiet. I found a home in the family of the trustee, Mr. Cook. They lived in a pleasant, old-fashioned farm-house, whose low walls, and broad porches, seemed to be the very abode of neatness, peace, and comfort. The large front yard was shaded by tall maples, but there was many a sunny spot where white and red roses lifted their sweet faces to the day. And the tall lilac and snow- ball bushes reached up so high that they looked into the windows of my pleasant little chamber. And, much to my delight, a robin had , built her nest on one of the topmost branches of a white lilac bush, and I could sit in my window and look direct- ly down into its nest, and behold the fears of the tender and faithful mother-bird, and note the attentions of the gal- lant lover husband, who was very gentle and pleasant to his brown, happy little mate, and yet who seemed to enjoy himself in a gay, masculine way when he was on the wing. Many happy, dreamy hours did I spend in that pleasant western HAPPY MOMENTS. 186 CECIL VAIL. window, with perfume and verdure about me and looking into the western skies, dreaming the dreams of youth. The wonderful, glowing dreams that cast a rosy shadow on the grayest sky when we are only twenty-one. The family of Mr. Cook consisted of himself, wife, little boy, and hired man, Aspire Dingman. The little boy's name was put down in the Bible, William Henry Harrison, but his father always called him Tippecanoe ; the rest of the family called him Tip. Tip, aged about six, or six and a half, was in a state of chronic disaffection with the world. Where he imbibed such gloomy views of life I know not, for his father was one of the hap- piest, as well as the best of men ; and his mother was altogether too energetic and hard-working to find any time to be gloomy. But Tip was misanthropic. His food never suited him, nor his apparel ; and above all his other clothing, he had a fur cap, that TIPPECANOE. filled him with the most morbid and unhealthy emotions. The wearing of this cap was a constant source of disagreement between him and his mother. He would, in hopes of its annihilation, leave it exposed to all sorts of dangers, from which his mother would always appear to rescue it. He would misuse it when out of her sight, but not fatally, owing to filial appre- hensions. But it seemed gifted with perpetual youth, or rather perpet- ual middle-age, for it had passed its first bloom when it fell to him from a richer relative with a larger head. CECIL VAIL. 187 His mother had contracted it in some way, so it fitted him tolerably well, if he would wear it properly. But though his mother was trium- phant in making him wear it, in one thing he was firm to the last ; let her put it on ever so good, he would never let it remain as she placed it ; but he would take it off and drag it firmly and defi- antly on to the backside of his head, so it would cover the most of his neck at the back, and in front leave about an inch of his pure white hair out in sight, like the frill of an old woman's cap. Aspire Dingman, the hired man, was tall, and exceedingly loose-jointed, and he bent slightly forward in walking. His hair and complexion were what is called sandy, and his large, wa- tery-looking blue eyes stood out from his face as if in search of something they could not find. He was always dressed in a suit of light-brown tweed, and I should judge that he had grown rapidly, for his pantaloons were too short for him, even his best ones, which he only wore Sun- days, and which were a large plaid, blue and green. His big leather ASIMKK DJSGMAN 188 CECIL VAIL. shoes were separated even from these by a wide stripe of blue stocking, like two desert islands divided from the mainland by a strip of the deep blue sea. And his large red hands were so far from the bottom of his coat-sleeves that they looked lonely, and utterly hopeless of ever getting into any situation where they could enjoy repose. He was exceedingly faithful in his work, but I had been there three weeks be- fore I discovered that he was a poet. Several times during that period, I heard Mrs. Cook speak in tones of withering contempt of " littery people," and she said it so directly at Aspire, that I could not help being aware that she meant him. But I thought, perhaps, that he whittled too much on the floor, or left things about, and by that she meant " littery." But one morning, during the third week of my stay there, Mrs. Cook remarked at the breakfast table that, " if there is any class of people I can't bear, it is littery folks ! " She said this with a glance of such unutterable contempt at Aspire, (who always sat at the table with the family,) that it made his mouth open, and his eyes stand out further than ever with terror and deprecation. I went to my room after breakfast and was writing a letter to Cecil, when Tip appeared at the door with his gloomy brow lit with a gleam of exultation, as he asked me, in mysterious tones, to " come down stairs a minute." He seemed so urgent about it, that I put away my pen at once, and followed him down into the sitting-room, and out on to the piazza. There had been a heavy fall of rain during the night, and Tip pointed silently to a small dark object, lying soaked and battered on the grass. It was the cap. " I guess it is done for now ! " he cried exultingly. But at this unlucky moment his mother appeared, and taking Tip and the cap into the kitchen, she subjected them both to a warming and purify- CECIL VAIL. 189 ing process, which, whatever it did to Tip, made the cap look better and more durable than ever. I had just turned to go in myself, when Aspire Dingman appeared suddenly at my side, and asked me : u Do you think there is any harm in folk's writin' poetry for their own devotion ? " I thought he meant psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs ; but he added, immediately, looking over his shoulder, in the direction of the kitchen, from which he could hear Mrs. Cook's voice as she cor- rected Tip, and also Tip's wails : " She is awful sot aginst writin' poetry ; but I don't see what hurt there is in it, if you don't print any of it; but do it jist for your own devotion." I told him I could see no possible harm in any one's diverting themselves in any innocent manner. He looked so depressed and unhappy, that I could not help giving him this slight consolation. And, as I said it, his face lighted up with satisfaction, and from that hour he commenced giving me, in the most secret and mysterious manner, little slips of paper covered with what he called poetry. They were usually written on square pieces of paper, bordered round the edge with a running vine, made by pen with great labor, in imitation I suppose of funeral odes, which I have seen printed at the expense of surviving relatives, and at their pecuniary disadvantage. There was one "Owed to Shakespeare,'' so long, that you might imagine that he had had a long account running with the noble trage- dian, and had come out largely in his debt. Then there were "Oweds to Spring, to Summer, to Hope, Memory, Liberty," and other single females, supposed to be free to receive the addresses of manly poots. As he delivered them to me he would shut the door, and stand with his back against it, and with a look upon his face as if Mrs. Cook wore liable to become, at any moment, an incorporeal substance and come 190 CECIL VAIL. into our presence through the keyhole. And accompanying each poem was a request, either verbal or written, " To burn it in the candle as soon as read." I had often read of the sufferings poets have endured from an unsympathizing world ; but I can truly say, that the sufferings of Aspire and the unappreciation of Mrs. Cook exceeded anything I had supposed possible. And I must have shown my pity in my counte- THE MANUSCRIPTS. nance, for he seemed deeply affected by it ; and I thought then, and I think still, that it was only gratitude that caused that stricken young man to think of me more highly than I deserved or desired ; for one evening (I had been there then about six weeks), as he handed me an " Owed to Saffo," with a secrecy he could not have exceeded had it been a deadly poison designed for the destruction of Mrs. Cook, he said to me, with a face that shamed his woolen shirt, and that was a warm crimson color : CECIL VAIL. 191 " Polly Ann Hawkins haint nowhere." I might have thought that this unfortunate girl had been suddenly annihilated had he not immediately added: " Before you came I thought she was pretty neat ; but, by vum, she can't hold a candle to you." One pleasant day in July I gave my pupils a half-holiday, which they much desired and had earned by their diligence and good behavior. And I left the school-room at noon amid acclamations of joy and loyalty many a monarch might envy. After dinner Mrs. Cook ask- ed me if I didn't want to walk down into the wood pasture with her ; she was going there to pick some berries. She said they were all going, Mr. Cook, Tip, and Aspire, and she thought I would be lonesome at the house alone. I told her I should be very glad to go. The wood-pasture was more than a mile away, and the way to it was full of summer delights. The berry lot was on the edge of the wood-land ; and, arrived there, I found so many beauties of ferns and mosses, and I loitered so dreamily over them, that, when Mrs. Cook appeared before me with her large pail full, I had not gotten my little two-quart dinner-pail a quarter-full. And as 1 looked at her brimming five-quart pail and her honest face dripping with perspiration, the noble ambition seized me on the spot to fill my little pail, or perish in the attempt. POLLY ANN HAWKINS. 192 CECIL VAIL. So I told Mrs. Cook, who seemed anxious to go to the house, as it was nearly supper-time, that they might all leave me, and after I filled my pail I would follow them. But after they all went away, the cool- ness and stillness was so delightful, and the golden sunlight glinting through the tree-tops was so delicious, that I sat down on a fallen tree for a while to enjoy it ; but the approaching sunset warn- ed me that if I mastered my ambition, I must be alert. I found a clump of bushes bending down with the luscious fruit, and had gotten my pail nearly full, and was reaching up for the cluster of larger ones, that I thought would look so well on the top as I carried it in, when I was startled by a voice close by my side. " Miss Nora, I have come a purpose." I turned, almost spilling my berries in my fright. " Aspire Dingman ! how you frightened me ! What ever brought you down here again ? " He was arrayed in his very best clothes, the blue and green panta- loons, the tweed coat, the flaming red neck-tie. The haste to get through with his chores, and return in time, which seemed to me an incredible feat, or some emotion that was struggling in his breast, ren- I COME A PURPOSE. CECIL VAIL. 193 dered his face of a scarlet hue, while his eyes had a sort of a wild look ; and never did his hands seem so homeless, look so much like two red wanderers who would never be at rest, as they did when he said again, in answer to my question : " I come a purpose." He seemed to have a difficulty in getting any further, and I said : " Come for what purpose ? " " I have come clear down here, Miss Nora, a purpose " Again his courage, or his breath, failed him ; and again 1 inquired, encouragingly : " On purpose for what ? " "A purpose to walk up to the house with you." I diligently suppressed any outward manifestation of annoyance, and answered pleasantly : "It was entirely unnecessary for you to take so much trouble. I should not have been at all afraid, although I suppose you thought I would. I think I wont wait to finish filling my pail, it is so nearly full ; but we will return to the house at once." Then picking up my hat and the pail, I was just starting for the house when Aspire exclaimed : " Wont you, Miss Nora, a goin' up to the house, lock arms with me?" " Don't let me hear any more such absurd nonsense, Aspire," said I, with all the dignity I could command. " Wont you lock arms with me part of the way ? " lie entreated. I was about opening my lips to rebuke him into something like common sense, if possible, when a glance at his woe-begone, despairing countenance softened my tone. " You go on ahead, if you please ; you know the way so much better than I do ; and I will follow. I know you can find out a better path than I can." 13 194 CECIL VAIL. He started immediately ; but every few steps he would look back over his shoulder at me, with a glance indescribable in its mingling of longing, agony, and suspense. Finally, he stopped short, and turned round and faced me. " Wont you lock arms with me agoin' through the stunny pasture ? It is awful hard goin' there over the stuns. Say, wont you lock arms with me there ? " "Mr, Dingman!" I commenced, in dignified tones "Wont you lock arms with me a rod or so?" " Aspire Dingman, if you don't go on and lead the way, I shall certainly go on first myself, and if you don't want to seriously dis- please me, you will cease talking so absurdly." He evidently discerned that I was in earnest, and he strode silently on, his long, lanky figure bending slightly forward ; but, ever and anon, during our entire walk, he would look over his shoulder at me, with a longing, unsatisfied look in his blue, watery eyes, as if, although he suppressed any active outward tokens of it, the desire was still rani- pant in his heart to "lock arms" with me. As we reached the door, he hastily thrust a paper in my hand, and disappeared, like a gaily-attired phantom, in the direction of the barn. I opened the paper as I stood there on the piazza. It was an " Owed to Miss Nora," and the fourteen verses following were worthy companions of the first, in merit and sentiment. " I cannot tell thee what I knew. To me such beauty lies In your dark hair, I call it a auburn hair Your forward, and your eyes. And when you raise them last-named on me I feel perfectly lost and dull, The admiration I feel for thee Is so completely inexpressible." CECIL VAIL. 195 Below was a request that I would "burn them iu a candle." I complied with the spirit of the request by putting them in the stove. On the occasion of Aspire's handing me his next poem which was addressed to " Miss Nora," and exceeded the former in sentiment, I considered it to be my duty to talk to him kindly, but firmly. He disappeared so suddenly, like a tweed phantom, while I was yet speaking to him, that I could not tell how he was affected ; but as I still held it in my hand, he appeared again at my side, and asked me, in an agitated tone : A FRIENDLY ACT. "Won't you burn it in a candle?" adding in a despondent way, "as a friend?" "Will you burn it as a friend?" And from this time, he always added this to his requests. And once on a cool day, he brought some wood into the room where I was sewing, and asked me if he should build a fire for me as a " friend ? " 196 CECIL VAIL. On my return from school one day about the middle of the term, Mrs. Cook invited me to go with her and her husband to Randolph that evening, to attend a temperance lecture. I accepted it very will- ingly. It was early when we arrived at the lecture-room, and I told Mrs. Cook that I would just step into the post-office. And with many admonitions to " come right back," Mr. and Mrs. Cook entered. I certainly intended to go right back, but I found a letter from Cecil, and what was the temperance lecture, what was all the world to me ? As I read the warm words that came so directly from his heart to my own, I read in them only a gay young spirit, that was finding the great world a delightful place ; but I did not read any- thing that told me that that delightful world was a dangerous one. for one of his generous, impulsive temperament. He spoke of his uncle Reginald as a u cool old fellow, who thinks himself one of the greatest of men, and who means to enjoy the world while he lives in it, and thinks his example is the only living one worth following/' I never thought that what to one of uncle's cool temperament, might be indulged in with comparative safety, might be fatal to one like Cecil. I laughed over his letter, and cried over it, for at the last he wrote : "I am working, working with all my strength, Nora. Of course I go into society a good deal, for Boston is a gay place, and uncle insists upon my doing like other young fellows of my age and station, for my being his nephew is in his eyes a greater merit than the cross of the legion of Honor. And if I refuse to go where he tells me, and do as they do when we meet, it seems to be a sort of a reproach to the life he leads, which I must confess, is rather of a gay one. And so that makes it impossible, dear, for me to do exactly as we talked about. I told uncle what you said. Your wanting me to study evenings as much as T could, and about shunning the first approach of temptation, and above all things, to shun wine-parties. CECIL VAIL. 197 "You ought to have heard him laugh. Said lie, fc l rather think there is no danger in your going where I take you. I declare, if such a thing were possible, I should almost think that Nora was ivtlccting somewhat on my life.' He thinks when he goes West, the p]ast tips up. But he is the coolest and steadiest old fellow going, belongs to the church, and if he should drink a gallon of wine, it would only make him walk straighter, and talk more impressively about ' my position,' and ' my nephew.' Of course I have got to do as he says, and go where he takes me, although at first I didn't care for such gay doings at all, only he made me go, and now how much rather I would spend a quiet evening with you. But I am working, Nora, working with all my might, and it is all for you. I am deter- mined to make a position in the world, to work myself up to a fortune, and a home for you, my darling sister a home so bright and happy, that it shall atone for the dreary past." When I entered the lecture-room it was crowded. The speaker had the compliment of every seat being full so early. I leaned up against a pillar near the door, and was resigning myself to a rather wearisome evening, in company with nearly a hundred fellow-sufferers, who were standing about me, occupying nearly every available inch of standing-room, when a good-looking young man carrying a child, with a woman following closely in his wake, came pushing through the crowd toward the door. As they passed me, he looked down into my face, and something in it seemed to awaken his generosity and nobler feelings, for he asked me in a hearty, honest voice, that I knew came from a good heart : " Don't you want a seat ? " I told him I should certainly like one, but it seemed impossible for me to have one. " Here, Nance, you take the little feller ; you shall have our seat. 198 CECIL VAIL. You see, miss, we was afraid that the baby was agoin' to have one, that is all that made us leave; we hated to, for the lecture is goin' to be a peeler! There hain't a smarter feller in the country than Dr. Chester, nor a better one. He lives in Boston, and you see he come here to visit his uncle, Judge Haviland, and the town invited him to lecture. He is as rich as a Jew. He lectures jest to do good ; and that is all he doctors for, too ; he no need to lift his finger. Come right along, miss. Nance, don't be nervious ; he won't have it before I get back." This last sentence was said over his shoul- der to his wife, after we started up the aisle. He placed me in an excellent seat, directly beneath the speaker's stand. I thanked him for his courtesy, as I took my seat, to which he leaned down, and replied, in a hoarse whisper : " I'd rather do it than not. Such a sweet, pretty face, to be a standin' up all night; I couldn't bear to see it. You see we wouldn't GIVING UP HIS SEAT. CECIL VAIL. 199 have missed it for nothin' in the world, only we was so afraid the little feller would have it, right here in meetinV How it terminated I never knew whether the " little feller " had one or not, nor what the mysterious thing was that was depending over the child's head. I thought, however, it was a fit. As the kind man lifted his broad, rosy honest face from before me, another face met my eyes, and, as the clear eyes looked full into my own, for a moment, as I lifted them, I thought then, and I think still, that I never saw a better face. It was not its beauty, although it pos- sessed that ; but it was something better than beauty, the Chevalier Bayard expression, " without fear, without reproach." It was an intel- lectual face in the highest degree, and yet it was a face that a child would trust instinctively. His lecture was something different from what I had ever hear* I. It was not the squalid, reeling drunkard that the speaker most con- demned ; it was the moderate drinker, the man who, with a cooler tem- perament and more natural self-control, can drink with less peril to himself, and so, by his own example of respectable vice, leads so many of excitable, intense temperaments down to ruin. He said one of these respectable drinkers was a greater curse to a community than a thou- sand hopeless sots ; for they, in their degradation, were a more terrible warning to youth than the most eloquent sermon could be ; and this respectable moderate drinker was the most insidious temptation to the young that Satan could possibly throw in their way. But, toward the close of the lecture, he gave a picture of a drunk- ard's death, and the heritage he left his innocent children the legacy of undeserved shame. So held and enchained was I by the eloquence and pathos of the speaker, that I did not realize that tears were flowing down my face till I met the deep, compassionate eyes, bent full and pityingly upon me. Then, in sudden recollection and shame, I bent my head down upon the 200 CECIL VAIL. seat in front of me, and sobbed like the baby that I was. But so many memories came to me my father's grave, the mockery of the village children, Cecil's distress, our gloomy home. When I raised my face again, attracted by the strange magnetism of a glance, it was only to meet the earnest penetrating gaze of the lec- turer, as he took his seat, for the lecture was finished. The temperance lecture was the engrossing topic of conversation for weeks. The handsome face, the eloquence, the pathetic power of the speaker was the one subject of interest. Mrs. Cook said, " It did beat all " how indifferent I was about it ; but Mrs. Cook was mistaken. *I did not forget it, nor him. Finally time, that waits for no one, brought the last day of my school; and though my life at Randolph had not been altogether pleasant, still I looked forward with dread to the time when I should leave for home for home ; and it seems dreadful to speak so about home; but it seemed more dreary and dreadful still. It was a very pleasant morning, and Aspire, who had been to the post-office early in the morning, had brought me a letter. It was from Cecil ; and I seized it, and ran away to my own room to read it. It was filled, as usual, with his warm, loving words; and then followed the mention of a name, that made my cheeks turn rosy red, even in the unbroken seclusion of my chamber. He had found a new friend, a Dr. Chester. That is, he had known him ever since he had been in Boston ; but at first the doctor had seemed not over cordial to his uncle or him. But his uncle had always treated the doctor with great respect, for he was one of the richest men in Boston, as well as one of th6 best, the most useful. " But, of late," wrote Cecil, " in fact, to be exact, ever since his visit to Randolph, Dr. Chester has shown me so many kindnesses and courtesies, that I cannot think they are for my own sake, but for the sake of my hidden princess, my fair Lady Nora. He told me that CECIL VAIL. 201 he saw you there. And I shall not run the risk of spoiling you by telling you what lie said about you, or what /said to him about you. " He has been so very good to me that I thought I ought to add to his happiness in some way ; and so yesterday, when we were speaking about you for whenever we are alone he invariably brings the conver- sation around to you I told him that my uncle was going to invite you to Boston for the winter. And you will come, wont you, darling ? You will break my heart if you refuse. " But, as I was saying, when I told Dr. Chester that you would probably spend the winter in Boston, a look of such glorified content swept over his face, that it was absolutely radiant. " But, joking aside, I am counting the days until winter ; for then I shall see you. If you -cannot come here, I shall go where you are. But I think if you were here all the winter it would be so much better every way ; for then I should stay at home evenings with you, or go out with you, and not go to all these gay parties, that are very fascin- ating, but I know are not the best thing for me." The letter was very long, as all his letters were, and, like them all, a delight to my soul. And, above all the letters he had ever written to me, this one filled me with a strange unreasoning bliss, the cause of which I did not try to explain to myself. But, as I went down stairs, ready for school, Mrs. Cook observed that, she guessed I was glad it was my last day, for she hadn't seen me look so bright since I had been there. As we drew near the school-house, Tip, who was in his most dejected mood, took hold of my arm, and shook it slightly, complaining that he couldn't get my attention. Said he : " I have asked you a question more'n twenty times, and you haint never answered me, nor nothin'. I never seen you act so kinder )US." I am afraid I blushed, even before little Tip. I know I hastened to 202 CECIL VAIL. give him due attention, and asked him at once to repeat his ques- tion. "Wall," said he, "do you think I shall out-live mother?" I said something about the uncertainty of life. " Wall, sposen I live to be eighty, or so ?" I told him his mother couldn't be expected to live to see him eighty. As I said this, he set his cap firmly on to the back of his head, and said, in a satisfied tone : "There is one thing certain, I shall have to have a new hat then, for there can't be a mourning weed fixed on to this cap, no how." Tip went home for his dinner, and did not appear in the afternoon. And when I went home at night I found Mrs. Cook in a state of deep anxiety. Tip had not been seen since noon, and his mother, with a weakness I would have believed impossible to her sensible nature, was treasuring up, to her grief, words Tip had uttered on his return home. Some boy had reviled the hated cap more than common, and life was a burden, he said. He shouldn't stand it so long, and she'd find out that he wouldn't, and she'd be sorry, when it was too late, that she made him wear it. There were tears in Mrs. Cook's eyes, as she related these melan- choly remarks. And when Aspire came in to supper, and said he saw Tip, early in the afternoon, going toward the creek, her agony was intense. Mr. Cook made the sensible and practical suggestion that " he has gone a fishing." " No ! Something had happened to William Henry. She felt it in her bones." The fact of her calling him William Henry impressed me, too, with a sense of his danger ; for it was the first time I had ever heard him called by that name. CECIL VAIL. 203 Aspire, always fidelity and goodness personified, took his hat silently from the nail, and started in the direction of the creek. In a few minutes he was seen coming through the orchard with Tip in his arms. We all rushed out into the porch to greet them. Mr. Cook was right. Tip's feelings had been too outraged by the school-boys to per- mit of his meeting them in the afternoon ; so he had been a fishing. TIP'S MISFORTUNE. But just as Aspire reached the stream, a treacherous log gave way, and the boy fell into the water. No worse consequences would have befallen him, probably, had he been alone, than a fright; but Mrs. Cook looked upon him as one rescued from the jaws of death. And as she grasped Aspire by the hand, which she thought had saved her boy from death, and which she knew had written such an amount of poetry under disadvantageous circumstances, she said : 204 CECIL VAIL. " There needn't anybody tell me that littery folks haint good for nothing." And while Aspire stood before her like a statue of bashful inno- cence, in damp tweed, she looked about her with an air, as if she had always been convinced of the fact herself, but had now got incontro- vertible evidence to prove it in the eyes of a gainsaying world. " I'd like to have anybody tell me now that littery folks haint good as anybody. I'd like to see anybody, while you are in my house, hin- der you from bein' littery." I was truly glad to know that Aspire's lot was to be pleasanter in the future than it had been in the past. And as he had returned to his devotion to Polly Ann Hawkins, which was warmly returned, life seemed to stretch before him in a pleasant valley. His Parnassus, at first so precipitous and rocky, had dwindled to a flowery hillock that he could climb with ease. I knew he had returned to his first love from an " Owed " he had handed me that morning. It was a very long u Owed " ; but one verse of it will give a good idea of the twenty-four remaining ones. It was entitled u A Parting Owed," and commenced as follows : I wish thee much joy, oh Miss Nora, Although I feel awful cast down and sore, To think of what couldn't never be, Beautifulest of wimming, which is thee! But if such thing can ere be did, I'll keep all former affections and admirations hid, And like a iron anchor stand By she whose name is Polly Ann. And now r , most loveliest mortal dame, With mournful joy I sign my name, Till I expire, Your friend ASPIKE (DlNGMAN.) CECIL VAIL. 205 In a short time Tip sat before the fire, swathed in blankets, looking like a small mummy who had died in despair. But once his face lighted up with joy and triumph. It was when Aspire, in relating for the third time, at the request of the mother, his simple story of the res- cue, mentioned, incidentally, that, as he lifted Tip from the water, Ihc cap fell off and went down stream, and was lost. I was to start for home the next day, and as then- was a small rent in the skirt of my grey traveling dress, I took it out into the pleasant western porch to mend it. And, as I sat there sewing, I pictured my return. I knew so well that my step-mother would discover that small mended place the first thing ; and how plainly I could hear her say : " Wall, Nora, you have hetcheled out that dress pretty quick ; and your shoes, too, if there haint a crack in one of them. They ought to have lasted you two years.." And then Mrs. Dagget would groan : t; I shan't be here long to see it go on." And then, in honor of my return, for I believe they were both attached to me, in their way, I thought, perhaps, Mrs. Dagget would strike into the funeral anthem which she always suiisi 1 in her hnppiVr moments. The tune was wailing and despairing in the highest degree; and in her quavering and mournful tones the effect was depressing and melancholy beyond words to describe. My friends, I am going A long and tedious journey, Never to return, Never, never, never to return. As I pictured all this, how low my heart sank ; and yet it was no ill-usage that I dreaded ; it was a total lack of sunshine, the heart-food, lacking which, the soul hungers. I wondered if home would be to me in the future as dreary as the, past had been. No! no! Cecil, my dar- ling! I should have a home sometime, a bright, blessed, beautiful 206 CECIL VAIL. home. I didn't care whether its walls were of brown-stone or un painted wood, so that it held peace and tenderness. Of course, I should not always be first in his heart, as I was now. There would be some gentle, lovely woman to share our home. I wanted it to be so. Earth's crowning blessing my darling must possess, if I looked out for it myself. And I would love her so dearly, because she was so dear to him. I would love her so she couldn't help but love me a little back ; and, like the fairy stories, we would live together happily ever after- ward. Perhaps I saw another face in the dreamy picture of my future. But, if so, I thought it was certainly not strange that I should remember one who had been so good to Cecil. It was always shadowy and quiet on that western porch, but it was more quiet on this evening, it seemed to me, than I had ever known it to be. I can remember just how the sky looked when I first went out, a mass of rose, and purple, and amethyst, changing to a pale golden yellow. But I sat there till it turned a dull, lifeless grey, and then a star shone out above it. It was then that a carriage with one man in it passed by, and I thought I heard it stop. But I thought, if I thought anything about it, that it was some one to see Mr. Cook upon business. I did not hear a step behind me, and the 'first intimation I had of any one's presence, was a friendly hand laid upon my shoulder : " You poor, dear child." Mrs. Cook's face was wet with tears, and she bent down and kissed me. " What is it ? " I cried ; " Cecil ? is anything the matter with Ce- cil ? " It was so natural for the first thought of my heart to rise to my lips. "You poor little dear!" This was from Mr. Cook, who was followed by an elderly man, whom I recollected as the innkeeper at CECIL NAIL. 207 Randolph. This man came forward and said, "This is the young lady, I suppose ?" And I remember well, how piteously he looked at me, as he handed me a telegram. I took it and read : BAD NEWS. " Cecil Vail mortally wounded. Send Miss Nora Vail instantly." From the time I read these words till I stood in the room with Cecil, it all seems like a dream, or rather as if all the world of liv- ing, breathing, happy beings, moving by their own volition and impulses, 210 CECIL VAIL. " Cecil, my darling, my brother ! " And I, Nora Tail, whose whole worth of life was here slipping from me so fast, knelt by him, with my arms about his neck, and my face pressed close to his own* At last he whispered, in a tone of self-reproach I couldn't understand : " I have broken your heart, poor Nora ; how white And he raised his poor, weak hand, that lay upon the counterpane, and tried to pass it caressingly over my face ; but it fell helplessly again to his side ; and with his eyes full of sorrow and deep self-reproach, the faint voice went on : " Did they tell you, Nora ? " "What, Cecil?" THE MEETING. CECIL VAIL. 211 " Did they tell you how it was done ? " " No, they told me nothing ! " " They will tell you," he whispered, in short sentences, broken often with weakness. "You will have to know it; I want to tell you now, while I can hear you say you forgive me ; it was in a drunken quarrel. Carlton insulted me, we had both been drinking, I struck him, and he stabbed me." He paused a minute, and then looked up into my face, with those affectionate, appealing eyes, that never appealed to me, or never could, in vain. " Can you forgive me ? I have broken my promise to you, but I 212 CECIL VAIL. was tempted, Nora ; you can never know liow they tempted me, uncle and all, and I was weak ; I have fallen so low 1 am too guilty." " You are not so guilty, my poor darling, as those who have led you, driven you into temptation. The guilt will be upon them. My broken heart, whose only treasure you were, will witness against them at the Last Day. Oh! w r hy did I ever let you go from me?" I cried in my anguish. The doctor touched me upon my shoulder. I remember well how tenderly and pityingly the kind eyes I had not forgotten, looked down upon me, as I rose and sat down by the pillow. He said " I need not disturb you but a minute." He bent down and moistened Cecil's lips with wine, for he lay again, as he did when I first came, white and motionless as the dead. The doctor did not caution me about exciting him, but only said, " he will revive again," and drew up a chair in front of the bed. We both waited ; it may have been a quarter of an hour that he lay thus, while the gray dawn struggled with the pale night-lamp for victory, and a shadow out of the dark passes of the valley would flit across his face, coming oftener and oftener; and the doctor's watch, ticking loudly in the silence, sounded like the pulse of eternity throb- bing on forever. At last Cecil opened his eyes, and seemed to be thinking of something that troubled him ; for he knit his brow, as if in deep thought ; finally he spoke in a whisper : - " Won't you tell me ; there is something I wanted to say ? " And he lifted to the doctor's face his great eyes, so full of the mystery of the future he was so near, and full of a perplexed, ques- tioning expression. The doctor bent over him, and laid his hand gently upon his forehead, and smoothed back the brown hair as tenderly as a mother might. "Was it something about your sister?" CECIL VAIL. 213 " Yes, Nora ; " and his eyes lost that seeking look, and became full of a boundless sorrow and regret. " Yes, Nora ; she loves me so." The doctor moved away, and went and stood by the window, looking out, and I went forward and knelt again by his side. "Nora, lay your cheek down close to mine. I can't die till you promise me something "I will promise you anything; there is nothing too hard for me to promise you." " Will you try to forget me ; let it be to you as if I 'had died when 1 was a baby." "Don't think of me, darling brother; think of But he interrupted me with his faint whisper, full of a bound- less sorrow and regret. " I said I would make your future happy, and I have broken your heart. I wanted to make you a happy home, that would atone Here the faint voice died out. " God will care for me, Cecil. Don't think of me, darling ; think of the Good Father, who can forgive all our sins, and take us to the dear home above, where there is no sin nor sorrow where we can meet again. Will you pray for this, Cecil?" I whispered, with my cheek close to his, which was growing cold so fast. " Lead us not into temptation," he murmured, striving to clasp his hands together, as he used to in prayer when a child. " I should have prayed that ; let them all those like me, as I was when I left you, young, unused to the world let them pray that prayer. Had I then, I shouldn't have been here, so low, beyond God's forgiveness God's mercy." "That you can never be. He loves you, and pities you more than you can ever dream of. He wants to forgive you, to take you to His own rest, if you will ask Him, if you will trust Him." 214 CECIL VAIL. But he only murmured again, with his faint voice, the words that seemed to him to be of most comfort, " Lead us not into tempta- tion." And then he added, while a sudden look of anguish, and despair, and reproach came into his face : "Tell uncle" But whatever message the soul, groping upon the borders of the unknown, where things strange to us here, will be explained, what- ever word he wished to leave for him who had been the cause of his undoing, will never be known here ; for the dying lips refused to utter what we could gather only in the knit brow of despair and the troubled and reproachful eyes ; the voice sank away into silence, and the message commenced on earth will be finished at the bar of God. He lay silent, with closed eyes, for so long a time that I thought he would never be conscious again. But as I bent over him, think- ing, as fond hearts will, that I could give him up if he could only look at me, or speak to me once more, he suddenly opened his eyes, and looked up into my face with the old innocent baby-look that he used to wear, with the anguish, and reproach, and fear all gone now. And I fancied he thought he was again in the old chamber at home, for he said with a smile, as he used to before I left him at night : " Kiss me, Nora." I bent down and kissed his brow, and cheek, and lips. Then softly, but quite loud and clear, he said:- " Good-night, Nora." Then he murmured dreamily some words of the old prayer he used to repeat to me : " Now I lay me down to sleep," and, turning his head over gently, he went to sleep. #### #*## From the moment of Cecil's death, there is a blank, a death in life, that lasted for long weeks, though there were intervals of par- CECIL VAIL. 215 tial consciousness that seem like fragments of frightful dreams faintly remembered, when I would be vainly striving to save Cecil from some danger ; it was Cecil, always Cecil, who was in some peril from which I was striving to rescue him. Sometimes he would be falling over a precipice, steep and sandy, clinging to a slender twig that grew upon its very utmost edge; and as I reached down to him it would break, and he would fall down, down, down ; and the sand would slide out underneath me, and I would fall with him and be lost. And days of unconsciousness would follow. Sometimes he and I would be walking over endless tracts of ice, glittering on every side of us, and no object in sight only us two, wh